


half-finished

by Arianne, graiai, patrexes



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harem, Canon Compliant, Forced Relationship, M/M, Memory Magic, Mind Rape, Painful Sex, Porn With Plot, Psychological Horror, Size Kink, Tempest Time Prison, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:01:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24932698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/graiai/pseuds/graiai, https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: In the memorial to the end of days, a single moment stretches to eternity.
Relationships: Background Exarch/WoL, Emperor Xande/G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch, Original Allagan Character(s)/G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	1. On Dialectic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heavensblessing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensblessing/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The musician we may think of as being exceedingly quick to beauty, drawn in a very rapture to it: somewhat slow to stir of his own impulse, he answers at once to the outer stimulus: as the timid are sensitive to noise so he to tones and the beauty they convey; all that offends against unison or harmony in melodies and rhythms repels him; he longs for measure and shapely pattern._
> 
> _This natural tendency must be made the starting-point to such a man; he must be drawn by the tone, rhythm and design in things of sense: he must learn to distinguish the material forms from the Authentic-Existent which is the source of all these correspondences and of the entire reasoned scheme in the work of art: he must be led to the Beauty that manifests itself through these forms; he must be shown that what ravished him was no other than the Harmony of the Intellectual world and the Beauty in that sphere, not some one shape of beauty but the All-Beauty, the Absolute Beauty; and the truths of philosophy must be implanted in him to lead him to faith in that which, unknowing it, he possesses within himself._
> 
> _What these truths are we will show later._
> 
> Plotinus I.3.1

The Crystal Exarch has little doubt he is and has ever been aught more than a rat in Emet-Selch’s maze, but doubtless he will condemn himself for the remainder of █████ if he does not _try_. 

The room which holds him is only a cell for the scale of it, everything within designed with a being exponentially larger than the Exarch in mind to use it. The knob of the lowest dresser drawer is level with his sternum, its diameter nearly as wide as his chest, and the bed is a sea of linen even when Emet-Selch deigns to join him in it. Reality distorts around the Ascian so that when he enters the room he seems to be to its scale, having no trouble turning the doorknob or throwing open the windows—so far out of the Exarch’s reach they might as well be barred for all the escape they could be—to let a faint breeze catch the gauzy curtains, and when he sits down on the bed and reaches for the Exarch, his hand is no larger than that of the Garlean he looks to be. 

When first the Exarch had awoken in Emet-Selch’s morbid dollhouse, the Ascian’s lone goal and pastime had been his attempts to ply from him the secrets of the Rift—and when those predictable methods had failed, he’d begun to employ that interminable cleverness to simply earn himself screams, perhaps solely that he might have anything at all to show for his trouble. In a sorcerer’s hands bones healed as quickly as they were broken—even the crystal within his body reformed from atoms after having been shattered by a silent, lightless frequency that tore apart the crystals’ very bonds. 

On those occasions, not infrequent, which Emet-Selch condescended to debase him it was hardly so inventive: his affinity was to have the Exarch upon his back, and the Exarch had rarely seen his expression depart from indifference. Soon enough his attention dwindled to only those such visits, and in time—unable to coax the Exarch to pleasure by any means but magic and at times unable to achieve even his own—those too had grown sporadic, until ███ ago he had left before the Exarch had regained consciousness, and not returned since. 

But the door has been left ajar if barely so, the latch sitting flush against the doorjamb to leave not an ilm of space between the two. Another man, in his efforts to avoid any noise that might stir the Exarch from his troubled sleep, might have overlooked that he had pulled the door shut so slowly it hadn’t caught. But Emet-Selch is not prone to mistakes, even were his control over his own creation not ironclad. A door latched is in effect an unbreakable lock; a door open too clearly a trap for the Exarch to ever venture through. This is clearly enough bait. 

To what, the Exarch could not say, nor does it matter. There can be no telling what new misery an escape attempt would incite, but should he sit idle he will feel complicit in his own captivity. And so he must try, if only so Emet-Selch’s taunting and the Exarch’s own thoughts cannot torment him with the reminder he had not. 

It is a matter of willpower to all but throw himself from the height of the bedframe, a source of trepidation even knowing he will land true—or _would_ , were his strength not a shade of itself to both an extent and duration he has never before experienced. His steps are labored, limping heavily, balanced only for the use of his staff. 

He pries first at the door with his fingers, more to judge the difficulty of his task than any expectation of moving it. The lavish furnishings of the room that is his cell are all corporeal, and the weight of the Amaurotine-scale door is as real as any. Grunting for the effort he manages perhaps another ilm—and with that he can replace his fingers with his staff, and by its leverage force what feels like solid granite on hinges to open a crack. 

On the other side he must rest, leaning his back against its—now comforting—solid weight, and wait for the dizziness of exertion to subside. It is now he expects the consequence will arrive, whether he be plucked back into bed or spirited elsewhere. His ears stand tall, on edge for any sound or disturbance that might portend it. 

When none comes, and the air no longer burns in his lungs, he bolts. To _where_ he doesn’t know: out of this building, past stairs he has to leap down, through plazas past wandering Amaurotines who take no notice of him at all. 

“They’re only shades, of course,” Emet-Selch had told him once, his body curled around the Exarch’s in a mockery of protection, having come and gone soft and still taking up his place inside. A wry laugh, and, “Shadows of the shadowless. My last visit to the Akadaemia—the true Akadaemia, before the Sundering—I met appeals to join no fewer than five separate debates. Now it holds only those unthinking… things. Not one capable of a meeting of minds.” 

Emet-Selch had spoken little during the act itself, preferring his mouth upon the Exarch’s neck, but afterward he began to recount his ██ as though nothing of consequence had just transpired, and was undaunted for the Exarch’s single-word affirmations. “I think you would quite like it,” he said of the Akadaemia, that this venture had seen him visit. “A haunt of the natural philosophers. My commitments gave me little excuse to visit, but I’m somewhat familiar through friends. Perhaps one day I shall give you a tour.” 

“Would you?” the Exarch murmured. 

“My recreation cannot compare with the institution in its day, but the exhibits, at least, are as they were. I only regret you’ll find the conversation among the guests to be lacking. I myself took little enough away from the threads of their discourse, but I daresay it is the easiest discussion you are like to find.” 

The Exarch shifted in Emet-Selch’s embrace, refusing to indulge the insult. “The guests?” he echoed. 

Shades. Incapable of a meeting of minds, said with the selfsame disgust that colored Emet-Selch’s voice when he spoke of the sundered. 

The Exarch kept pointedly silent; see how he liked _this_ unthinking thing. In return, Emet-Selch dug his nails into the Exarch’s wrist. 

The Exarch rubs the lingering memory away, the bruises already faded to only a faint pallor. Real though the world around him seems, the cobblestones beneath his feet, the warm light of the towering streetlamps, the robed figures going about their business all around him—all of it is illusory, no more than the overactive imagination of a lonely old god-king. For all the Exarch knows it may cover their entire world, at least what remains of it: he has yet to find any other limitation to Emet-Selch’s command of sorcery than the sentience of his Amaurotine automata and the embodied travel across the Rift which so confounds him. And even in these it seems more like that Emet-Selch lacks not the skill, but only the knowledge. For all he laments the emptiness of his creations he too has recounted conversations with the memory of an old friend, and even to walk the streets of Amaurot “reborn” the Exarch does not believe his bitterness has ever bled into true delusion. 

He would make far less a formidable opponent, should ever his determination of what is real become blurred. 

The Exarch clings to reality himself, the facets of crystal upon his body serving as his tick-marks etched into the walls. No matter how leisurely feels Emet-Selch’s pace, his captivity has been closer to days than decades, lest the crystal subsume him and do who-knows-what to the Exarch’s unnatural life. Through tracing and re-tracing the lines upon his shoulders he can take his assurance Emet-Selch has not (yet) decided to simply wait: while neither may know how many centuries remain of the Exarch’s life, it is certainly more than await the Warrior of Light. 

If indeed the Warrior of Light still lives. 

It is hope which leads him to believe so, yes. But, he reasons, wherever in Norvrandt the Exarch now dwells, and however long he has dwelt here, his very existence confirms the First has not been lost. Removed from the Crystal Tower the Exarch lacks the strength to cross the Rift by his own power; Emet-Selch by his own admission will not, so long as he remains incapable of ferrying the living Exarch and his well of knowledge alongside him. Even if there is no outer bound to Amaurot’s reach, even if it is centered upon the Exarch’s own perception so that he may never _find_ the end that does exist, they are somewhere familiar—and if his strength to keep running is borne by any force beyond desperation, it may be he has been held in Lakeland itself, with the strains of Emet-Selch’s attentions keeping him artificially weak. 

—and if it _is_ purely desperation, well, he’s no shortage of it. It is desperation which has gotten him this far: desperation which led he and the other few survivors of the Eighth Umbral Calamity to seek the very undoing of history, and desperation which kept him reaching out for the Warrior of Light after failed attempts left him with an ever-growing number of displeased and disembodied Scions. It is desperation which keeps him standing now, scouring this necrotic utopia for something, _anything_ which might free him. In all his life, the Exarch has never come upon a glamour that cannot be broken. 

It is desperation which leads him to a tall structure which appears to be a gate, and beyond which he can see nothing at all, not even darkness. Whatever sits on the other side is simply beyond perception. The structure’s door is as heavy as all the rest in its enormity, but it swings open with ease on weightless hinges when the Exarch tries it. 

Beyond the door lies his home. 

The Exarch slumps against the cool, familiar crystalline wall in relief. Yes, of _course_ if anything in the First were to persist through Emet-Selch’s magic it would be the Crystal Tower—standing as a testament to the resistance of the sundered, surviving five Calamities and repurposed as a weapon against its very creator. The Exarch soaks in its magic, feeling it mend those wounds Emet-Selch does not himself heal, and his gasps for breath fall quiet as the force which will eventually consume for itself the last of his heart and lungs now gives him the strength to ensure he survives to feed it. 

If before all had not been lost, now something has been _won_ —the Exarch rises, and for the first time in he knows not how long, his head does not swim with dizziness. He begins to wander the halls: whatever entrance to the Tower he has found, it is none with which he is familiar, but even this reminder of his incomplete mastery of it cannot douse his spirits. Somewhere amid this maze is a path to the Ocular. He only need find his way there and he may again see the Warrior of Light, if only his champion will still have him. 

But reflected in the pane of the Ocular’s ensorcelled looking glass which does not lie is a sight more horrifying than he could have imagined. The Warrior of Light’s features are plainly made out in—the Exarch supposes it must be called a face, but it is mutilated as any Sin Eater’s, corrupted by the Light into a bright-shining terror of what those lost souls once were. He yearns to speak to the creature in its—its torment, to offer whatever soothing he can falsify, to be soothed in turn by that soul his own betrayal has proven himself unworthy of. He hopes most of all that that which he gazes upon has at least been granted the hollow mercy of being spared the _awareness_ of its suffering, even if in doing so the Exarch must condemn the First to the Flood at the hands of its would-be savior. 

He turns, and runs. He does not know where to, nor does it matter. They could have minutes, seconds until the world is swallowed up—or years, or days, but enough time he might work his scheme so that at least this world cannot become another shard rejoined. Even now he could be trapped in the event horizon of the end of this world, a single moment stretched out to infinity in Emet-Selch’s boundless want for those secrets of the Rift he in all his unsundered glory has not discerned for himself. 

He hears a voice resounding from everywhere and nowhere, and the words do not make it past the frantic beat of the Exarch’s heart, but it is Emet-Selch’s voice, and—and he is _glad_ of it, hoping and fearing and _needing_ this to be the trap he has awaited since he slipped his cage, that the sight of the corrupted Warrior of Light and even the very walls around him are illusion, meant to break him and near, _too_ near, to succeeding. 

“I understand that your kind are subject to every whim of your emotions,” Emet-Selch says archly, and the Exarch wonders if he is watching his flight, perhaps entertained by its pointlessness, “but I must warn you that your vaunted champion’s salvation will not come of you cowering in a corner. That guilt which weighs so heavily upon you will follow wherever you try to run. Yes, even into the deepest depths of your sanctuary.” A pregnant pause runs long, and Emet-Selch’s tone shifts from amused condescension to something a great deal more hostile. “But then, it isn’t _yours_ , is it?” 

—and all the strength and vitality the Crystal Tower grants its victim and beneficiary is sapped away, and the Exarch collapses, his legs giving out under his own weight. In his not-quite-escape, adrenaline had forced pain and ever-present exhaustion to the wayside; now both return in full force, all the more intense for the brief respite afforded him. 

Leaning heavily on his staff, he is able to force himself to his feet. It is not impossible this is the true Crystal Tower and Emet-Selch has wrested all control of it from him, but it, like Amaurot, may be naught but smoke and mirrors, the energy it had imbued him with for those few precious ████ simply another magic trick. 

For a century, the Exarch had been meticulous in keeping Emet-Selch—and most everyone else—out of the Umbilicus; now it will surely lead him nearer to an answer to its veracity, for Emet-Selch cannot glamour that which he has never seen. And limping over the threshold, he finds himself surrounded not by his own stacks of tomes but instead countless neat rows of storage nodes in a massive skylit hall with architecture from the height of Allagan civilization. The library of Amonopolis, perhaps: lost in the Fourth Umbral Calamity and all its much-lauded archives with it. Emet-Selch does so enjoy showing off. 

“Thank the Twelve,” the Exarch breathes, slumping exhaustedly over the counterweight of his staff. He has delivered himself into the trap Emet-Selch has likely had set from the beginning of this whole interlude; from the very moment the Exarch awoke all his senses and perception have been twisted and distorted to suit Emet-Selch’s mercurial whims. This game only seeks to break his mind rather than his body—and the Exarch cannot to guess what constitutes the difference to a being such as Emet-Selch. But wherever he is, wherever Amaurot is, none of it need have any bearing on reality; none of it can be trusted. And so hope wills itself to bloom in the Exarch’s chest: if he cannot know what is real, there will always be the chance the Warrior of Light yet lives as himself. 

“What have you to thank your Twelve for? All of this,” and the Exarch knows Emet-Selch to mean _all of history_ , “is _my_ work. Go on, have a look.” 

He does so with a healthy trepidation—but of all Emet-Selch’s mind games, the Exarch can admit to himself this is far from the worst. In the Sixth Astral Era Amonopolis was known to be lost, a wonder he alone had seen, and that through the filter of distant memory. What Emet-Selch has made seems to be a true replica, indistinguishable by any sense known to the Exarch. He takes a wary step towards the nearest node, blinking idle. 

A perfect reconstruction of the library of Amonopolis is like to be a reconstruction of all its contents, just the unnecessary flourish the man who populated his illusory city with shades of the dead would be drawn to add. If the Exarch plays along, there is every chance he will win some lost scraps of Allagan history for his participation; if he hesitates, he can be assured only of the torture. He steels himself for whatever is coming, and reaches out to touch the face of the storage node. 

It turns to ash beneath his fingers, and all the rest of the library with it, leaving the Exarch alone in the bare room he had claimed a century ago for his study. He turns his hand as if needing to prove to himself its emptiness, and then lets it fall to his side. 

“Everything of your world is so very fleeting. Best not get too attached.” Emet-Selch needn’t come out of hiding for the Exarch to recognize his false concern, the mild sneer surely writ across his features. “ _I’ve_ always thought Allag some of my best work, but you, Exarch… it does surprise me you share my nostalgia. You know well as I do a fair-faced Miqo’te would not so much as have been taught to read.” 

No longer is the Umbilicus empty. All about him mill the illusory forms of pretty, androgynous figures in gleaming finery. The Exarch’s eyes are drawn to glittering gemstones on fingers and ankles, to the iridescence of shot silk clinging even as it drapes down the curve of a slender hip. Most are Miqo’te, with cosmetics darkening eyes both slit-pupiled and dilated, but there are several long-limbed Elezen with delicate rings dangling from their ears and even a few Hyur. All are bedecked in jewels and gold which gleam in the soft glow of the Tower’s walls, and while some recline in clothes as intricate as the plaits in their hair, others wear nothing else. 

The Exarch raises his own hand, and a feeling of _wrongness_ settles into his belly at the sight of intricate filigreed and beaded bracelets encircling his crystal arm. His old, familiar robes are gone, leaving his feet bare and only a skirt of red silk and loose gold netting beaded with turquoise and malachite slung low across his hips. One of them, it leaves wholly exposed. 

“Or did you think your royal blood would save you?” comes Emet-Selch’s voice, unheard by the shades. 

“I tire of this,” the Exarch snaps. “Don’t you grow sick of the sound of your own voice?” 

He weaves through the insubstantial crowd, the other harem inmates—for they can be nothing else, the scene surrounding him like nothing so much as a painting of that infamous decadence of antiquity—stepping smoothly aside as the Exarch makes his way to the door and the stern-faced Hyur who guards it. Even for a Midlander, the man is tall, cutting a hulking figure which looms over Raha, and when he speaks it is Emet-Selch’s undisguised disdain which comes out of his mouth. “Who gave you leave to wander the halls?” 

Raha does not dignify him with an answer, only pushes past the man—or tries to, shoved back roughly instead by solid, corporeal, _warm_ hands. The floor is cold under his bare feet. 

Emet-Selch’s dioramas, his architectural models, whatever he’d most hate the Exarch to call them—all are achingly realistic in their rendering in sorcery. But some disdain for so-called lesser modes of being seems ever to translate into flat, insubstantial puppetry overlaid like an afterthought: the shades of Amaurot, the fair-faced harem slaves, the image of the Warrior of Light made Lightwarden reflected in the—Raha prays—illusory Ocular. All of these he has little doubt his touch would make scatter like those nearshore fish when one wades into the tides, nothing binding together their constituent atoms but the air upon which they are projected, glamoured in particulates of dust. These figures are a shadow play, insubstantial things; the guard’s calloused, sweat-dampened hands bespeak some other sorcery at play. 

Raha sighs, too exhausted to keep being strung along so. “What is it you want from me?” 

“You’ve studied your didactics,” the guard—Emet-Selch—reminds him. “Ask me properly.” 

It is little trouble to guess what sort of entreaty will appease him, for Emet-Selch is a petty god and a cruel emperor. The Exarch thinks back to half-forgotten tomes of praise poetry, and begins sharp-voiced. “I beg this of my most merciful and terrible ruler,” and while the first few words come with difficulty, as Raha speaks the rest flows from his tongue as though in his memories he has said these words countless times before, “He who by might of invincible words covers the land in His radiance. O lord of all great divine powers whose name is established to the ends of the worlds, I beg you give me leave to pass.” A breath, Raha careful to keep his gaze lowered— 

—and the guard stepped silently aside. 

Raha’s bare feet were silent on the cold metal, though he felt even to himself so out of place beneath the harsh lights that it seemed each step should raise a clamor. He was unseating the calm of this wide, empty hall with only his presence, and longed for the narrowness and scant overhead lighting of the passages meant for the slaves to traverse, warm from only the heat of other bodies in cramped surrounds, out of sight and momentarily safe. Here Raha was exposed, vulnerable, and even keeping close to the wall with downcast eyes and the silent pad of his feet he felt a churning dread deep in the pit of his stomach. A thought straying for Emet-Selch’s purpose with this illusion, he tamped down the desire to flee. 

A hand caught his arm, and Raha dropped like dead weight, writhing to free himself—to no avail, strong fingers only coiling firm and overlapping around his thin wrist. “Where do you think _you’re_ going?” and Raha did not know if it was an inquiry after his presence in the public hall or mockery of his failure to escape. 

He knew he was not meant to answer. 

Raha did not rise: perhaps if he behaved ill the man would decide Raha more trouble than he was worth. But he said, “Get up,” and tugged at Raha’s wrist, a clear enough order itself. 

Raha was given no leave to obey before his right arm was nearly wrenched from its socket for the force with which the man dragged him to his feet; slender as he was, Raha’s weight was nothing to a well-built Allagan. His shoulder burning, he stumbled as he was pushed forward and made to walk with the man behind him, led by the scruff of the neck as if he were a child, or—or an impertinent pet. He may as well have been grabbed by the collar, shoved into an adjoining room. 

Like the hall itself, it was in the stark modern style, not the traditional decoration of the Umbilicus, and it too was populated by a small crowd of revelers in finery—but true finery, the dress of royalty, not the pretty baubles of a harem plaything. “Look what I found wandering the halls.” 

“Oh dear,” said one of the—princesses, to judge from the jewel which sat in the center of her brass coronet, “has father lost a kitten?” 

The man—the lord—who had caught him had not released Raha’s neck from his grasp as his other hand became familiar; Raha gasped when, for only a moment, he cupped Raha’s soft cock. A laugh, then. “Don’t think he’s had this one yet.” 

“One this pretty? He must be waiting for some occasion,” came a new voice from behind him. 

Another: “Or it’s a gift.” 

“Well then, have you?” the princess asked, and Raha quickly cast his eyes back to the floor upon realizing he had met her gaze. “Been fucked by the Emperor?” 

Emet-Selch had stitched shut his bullet wound with needle and thread, the way his Garlean guise would have had to, hands gentle and his voice deceptively soft bidding Raha, “Stay still.” Magic came second-nature to him, clear enough from their first meeting when Emet-Selch had still worn an Ascian’s robes, for Solus Galvus had not yet been born. But magic would have done away with the wound, and the pain with it, and Emet-Selch had little enough interest in sparing Raha pain. Afterward he put Raha on his back to take him, so that with each of his thrusts the raw stitches pulled against linens stained with blood and antiseptic, and Emet-Selch’s cock was wet with only what amount of both remained in his hand. 

Yes, he has been had by the self-styled emperor of Garlemald, and Ronka, and necessarily by Xande of Allag as well, if one believed Emet-Selch spoke only truth. To accept that would be to accept the great men of history to which Raha had dedicated his life in study were but one, and this can be little but an illusion meant to remind him. 

But from Raha’s lips fell the words, “No, Your Highness,” and in the moment they did not feel like a lie. 

The lord had not stopped touching him, and took hold of Raha’s narrow shoulders in order to spill him backwards onto some manner of table. Too short even for Raha, small among Miqo’te, its edge bit into the underside of his knee, and his head fell back unsupported. The lord’s grip shifted to his hair. 

“You heard him!” came someone’s warning—for there were too many present for Raha to identify by voice, and he could see only the legs of his current captor, and the bulge between them. 

“So long as we don’t spoil him for Xande, what’s to stop us from having a bit of fun?” The lord’s fingers dug into the hinges of Raha’s jaw, forcing open his mouth; another man’s fingers pressed past his lips, quick to retreat as his mouth was then filled with a cock. He choked, arching his back; hands pinned him back down, all so much larger than his own and possessed of a strength sure to leave bruises upon his wrists, his hips, his shins where someone held them to pin his thighs to his chest. A woman grabbed for one of his hands and pried open the fist he had made, and the bracelets about his wrist clattered as his fingers were pressed up into her. 

The gauze and gold netting of the wrap belted around Raha’s hips pooled in his lap, leaving him all but bare. He expected his knees to be forced apart; instead a hand caught both his thighs under the knee in a firm grip, and the wet head of a cock pressed into the gap between them. 

With more experience—with experience at all—perhaps Raha could have known that the man fucking his throat was close, but it was a shock when he came, pulling out to paint Raha’s tear-streaked face with spend. His coughs hadn’t near enough time to calm before a woman sat upon her knees on either side of his shoulders, bare beneath her hiked-up skirt. Taking his head in both of her hands she lifted it, but instead of forcing his mouth to her cunt she _laughed_. 

“What?” someone asked. 

“Look at the eyes!” And then she was not the only one laughing, as many voices as hands upon him echoing nearly synchronous. Raha’s gaze skated past their faces, desperate not to be caught looking into any of their matching red eyes as if he thought himself an equal. 

“Whose is it?” 

“Has to be Salina’s. Hold its thighs, won’t you?” and the men between his legs shifted, not another—a third?—cock pressed into his thighs while a hand, slick with come the others have left behind, grasped Raha’s own cock, soft and hopelessly small nestled in his palm. 

“I can’t believe your sister let one of them rut in her,” said the woman above him. 

“Look at this cock! I swear it has _spines_ on it.” 

“Watch, next she’ll be taking a coeurl as a lover.” 

The woman atop him abruptly rose, and when Raha attempted to follow a man’s hand stopped him, fingers knotting in his hair to force his head back, a painful stretch in the line of his throat. Obedient, Raha’s mouth fell open to be taken. 

“His tongue too rough for you?” said the man who took her place. 

She scoffed like she was insulted. “It didn’t take _that_ much after its father. It’s just useless.” 

“Xande won’t care. He’ll never fit in this mouth.” 

“Oh, absolutely not,” someone laughed, and then one of them—one of them had made him _come_ , skilled fingers dragging his release from him unwilling and halfway unnoticed, so overwhelmed by the use. Those fingers pressed the mess past his lips alongside the cock in his mouth. He could taste his own shame on his tongue. 

A faraway voice, not one Raha thought he had heard gave a derisive scoff. “You do know they’re beasts? They’ll come for any stimulation.” Every word seemed to bring the speaker closer, until then another hand, seeming cool to Raha’s fevered skin for not being soaked in the sweat of exertion, curled around his thigh. A slender cock poked between his thighs. 

“So don’t touch them. Father certainly doesn’t,” said the princess. Her knees pinned Raha’s shoulders, grinding against the knobby extrusion of one, slick and hot against his skin. 

And there was something said after that, Raha thought, but there was another cock—bigger than the lord’s, even as big as Emet-Selch’s?—forced down his throat, and the princess’ weight laid heavy on his lungs, and the man making use of his thighs, _oh_ , his length dragged against the shaft of Raha’s own spent cock and that cool, soft hand took hold of them both—and he cannot breathe, exhausted from the moment Emet-Selch revealed his ruse, struggling enough to endure his focused attention when it is only _his_ , and he cannot know what surroundings will await him when next he wakes, but as unconsciousness finally takes him he finds he does not care.


	2. On Quality and Form

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What, then, distinguishes Quality in the Intellectual Realm from that here, if both are Acts?_
> 
> Plotinus II.6.3

Raha awakes in bed in his cell, naked as the day he was born. He can feel the tightness of his skin from the tears dried on his cheeks, and the dried mess on his belly. There is an ache in parts of his body which should no longer be able to feel pain at all. 

“For every expectation you exceed, Exarch,” comes Emet-Selch’s drawl, “you fall short of another.” He stands distant, arms crossed and leaning back against the wall, the doorknob which towers so drastically above Raha’s head level not even with his hip but his thigh. And _he_ is fully clothed, not a strand of hair out of place nor a fold in his formal military garb mussed. 

Raha is silent. He’s grown used to these monologues of Emet-Selch’s. 

“I was _proud_ ,” he begins after a beat, and were he faced away, Raha would roll his eyes. “Even in the face of your worst nightmare you discerned how to tease out the limits of my little test, only to fall to lust.” He waves his hand derisively, eyes skating over Raha’s nakedness as if he finds it distasteful. “I had to carry you back like this, you know.” 

Raha’s first instinct is to wonder why he had to be _carried_ , but if he asked, Emet-Selch would tell him. 

“Is it not enough for _you_ to toy with me? To recreate your fallen city and my fallen friend?” Raha counters, pushing himself up on his elbows with aching arms. It is an obvious ploy to confirm the truth he had deduced—that the Warrior of Light yet lived, or might. Indeed Emet-Selch refuses the bait, mouth fixed and arms crossed, and so Raha needles, “Clearly not, for you make monsters of your own lost flock with which to—to violate me as well.” 

“I will freely admit to the illusion of the Tower, and of your _dear friend_ ,” Emet-Selch sneers, and it seems not to be mockery in his voice but sincere anger, vicious and mournful. He hardly looks at Raha, like he cannot bear it. “Nonetheless, whatever left you in this sorry state was not of _my_ creation.” 

It’s little use to lose one’s patience with Emet-Selch, and often a detriment, but Raha cannot hold back his fury. He pushes himself the rest of the way upright. “What, then? A bad dream? A trick of the light?” 

“Only the light in your eyes, perhaps. They glow so very bright of late.” 

As Raha draws up his knees and curls his tail around his ankles—an action that makes him no safer but which the hindbrain insists upon all the same—he closes his eyes as well. The spite of the act is as likely to amuse Emet-Selch as infuriate him. “Are you insinuating—this was a creation of my own memory?” 

“Memories, fantasies… What would _I_ know about the particular grasp Allag has upon you? Or should I say your grasp upon it?” Raha can well imagine the way Emet-Selch no doubt offers a careless flourish of a wave, like batting away a fly. “Whatever it was, perhaps I should consider a similar approach. It seems to have its appeal.” 

Raha feels sick. “You think I could ever find your touch _appealing_?” Emet-Selch’s scoff comes much closer to the bed than Raha is expecting. He opens his eyes to find Emet-Selch looming above him in a way that the proportions of the room suggest he should not be able to do—and yet. Raha folds his arms around his knees and lays his head upon them, face turned away. “If what you want is to break me, do not leave the job to your _shades_.” 

Emet-Selch perches unbidden on the edge of the bed, but the expected fury does not come, neither hand nor voice raised. He only says, softly and with too little consideration to be ingenuine, “Whatever gave you the impression I intended to break you?” 

Raha had thought he was being mocked; this— _sincerity_ he likes even less. He lifts his head sharply, wishing to look Emet-Selch in the eye to make his accusations. “You ask this of _me_? Of the captive you keep in your—in this bed? I—” All his words shy away from his tongue. Emet-Selch would argue to name the abuses has no effect on their reality, but for Raha to do so feels somehow more unbearable than surviving them. “Every kindness you’ve ever shown me was only to hurt me all the worse in the next breath. I won’t itemize for you your acts of brutality.” 

“‘Acts of brutality’.” He sighs. “I suppose you mean the rape.” Raha flinches as sharply as if he’d been touched; the two of them sitting so close on the bed, he expects that will come soon enough, whensoever Emet-Selch tires of the sound of his own voice. “I’ll admit it’s an amusement. Why you mortals are so hung up on the depravity of that particular grindstone, I doubt I’ll ever know.” 

“You mean to—what, then? Wear me down?” 

“Yes, in a sense, and in doing so I mean to appeal to your higher sensibilities… few as they apparently are,” Emet-Selch explains, bitterly reminiscent as Raha has only ever heard him speak of Amaurot. “Every shade which has ever writhed upon the Source would shy away from mere pain. But you, Exarch…” He hangs his head. “Your very soul is more complete than any save the Emissary’s. You claim to dedicate what life you have to the pursuit of knowledge. I offer it—and you elude me at every turn. Given free roam of Amaurot, you run to Allag. You hang off the every word of those _things_ , yet told of true history you will not muster even a mockery of interest. Even _this_ —” and it is only now, with Emet-Selch’s wave at the dried, flaking mess on Raha’s belly, that he realizes the only spend marking his skin is his own. “You refuse to come for the Architect, but you will his tower?” 

“It wasn’t for the _tower_ ,” Raha snaps. “They—” and cuts himself off but one word too late. 

“Who? A figure out of some romanticized fantasy, dreamed up to spite me?” Raha refuses to answer, and brings his knees back up as though to hide the evidence under Emet-Selch’s knowing gaze. “…No, it mustn’t be. You would be proud of yourself if you had. I wonder if my illusions didn’t shake loose a memory? Allag as it was. How it would have had a pretty thing like you.” 

“A memory…” he murmurs, an unnameable emotion taking grip of his heart: something akin to devastation. Raha considers denying it; Emet-Selch would never believe him, even should Raha be able to argue in all his conviction that Emet-Selch is _wrong_. But he has seen Allag before in memory, and never has it been inaccurate—if Emet-Selch speaks true, and it was not his doing… 

“I defended them,” Raha mutters, and for all the vulnerability it shows he can’t imagine what use Emet-Selch might find in a scholar mourning his rose-tinted view of a civilization long dead. “Argued that that infamous imperial decadence was exaggerated by their detractors—of course they committed atrocities, and surviving legal codices show the framework of systemic discrimination, but surely… I always told myself, surely Hydælyn would not stand for any of Her children to so wholly objectify the remainder. I thought it must have been you.” Raha shakes his head, hot tears at the corners of his eyes that he hopes in vain to hide. “I hardly expect you to treat me as more than a—a _thing_ only there for your pleasure. But they ought to have been my equals. I thought—the things they said…” He swallows hard. “I thought it was you.” 

A long silence settles; if Emet-Selch is breathing, Raha cannot hear it. He looks up to find—well, some emotion across his face, one Raha doesn’t find himself capable of reading let alone giving a name. 

“Very well,” Emet-Selch says at last. “If this is what it takes to capture your interest…” Without moving, without even a snap of Emet-Selch’s fingers, Raha finds himself sitting not on a bed but on a hard floor as around him the plain Amaurotine bedroom is transformed to a room just as large or larger, all golden and shining lights in harsh geometric patterns. The throne room of the Crystal Tower, at the height of Allag’s power. 

And before him stands not Emet-Selch looming but Xande _towering_ , a single hand on his arm enveloping it as Emet-Selch—Xande— _Emet-Selch_ drags him close, taking his place upon the throne and pulling Raha along with him to decorate his lap. 

Every aspect of the illusion is flawless, the throne room as awe-inspiring a sight as it had been when first Raha was so lucky to look upon it with the Warrior of Light at his side. The walls gleam very nearly alive, and the arm of the throne is as cold digging into his skin as Xande’s hand is hot. All of it is real, _tangible_ in a way that—for all of its intricacy—Amaurot feels to Raha lacking. The only incongruity is his own bareness. 

In his game, Emet-Selch had dressed Raha in the fine silk and weighty jewelry of his people’s long-forgotten station. It would be no hardship to do so again now and lend greater realism to this—whatever Raha is meant to call this. Surely a harem slave would not be brought before his emperor in such a state as he is now, wrists bare of even the plainest bangles and spend dry on his belly, his hair let down in a tangled, sweat-damp mess. 

Xande drags one hand across Raha’s stomach; it nearly spans the width of his waist. “And what’s this?” he rumbles, his voice having nothing in common with Solus zos Galvus’ and yet unmistakably _Emet-Selch’s_. He rubs two enormous fingers together, Raha’s shame ground to dust between them. “Has someone spoiled my prize?” 

It is not that Raha is not afraid—no, he is terrified of this new weapon Emet-Selch has against him in his own memories, and how he might think to deploy it—but something leaves him too tired to play along. “No,” he says plainly, nothing like how a pet ought to speak to an emperor. What brand of cruelty placation spares him will only ever be replaced by another, and at least like this he can cling to his pride. “No. You’re the first to have me.” 

The echo of Xande’s strike rings out from the facets of the crystal walls; Raha, stunned silent, cradles his cheek, which without intervention will become nothing but a single all-encompassing bruise. His throat fills thick with tears, and he swallows them back. He will not give Emet-Selch that satisfaction from a mere reflex. 

Raha himself derives some from watching Xande favor the hand which struck him. “Have they not taught you to address your Emperor, _boy_?” he spits. 

Raha lowers his eyes. “Merciful king, I beg you forgive your servant its transgressions,” he recites. Emet-Selch cares little for rote dialogue, but less for what he deems pandering. “I will have known no other, my lord.” 

Emet-Selch had not asked, when it would have been true—by letter of the law if not perhaps the spirit. G’raha Tia had taken men into his mouth on several occasions; while the real Xande (inasmuch as he can be called real) would certainly believe him a virgin having done so, Raha is less certain where Emet-Selch’s own definition lies. Surely he had surmised as much regardless: Raha dreads to think how obviously he must have displayed his inexperience those first ████, when Emet-Selch did little but fuck him. When at last he ordered Raha pleasure him with his mouth, Raha was unpracticed and unwilling, but not struggling with the theory. 

“And what reason have I to believe you?” Xande presses. The only purpose of asking seems to be degradation, when Raha is not allowed to defend his candor. Xande’s hand, wrapped around Raha’s thigh, nearly encircles it, so much larger is he; a flick of his wrist sends Raha sprawling across his lap on his front entirely heedless of the mess, and Xande pries apart his thighs to inspect him. The angle at which he’s forced to hold his leg aches near-instantly, and the fingers of Xande’s other hand come to spread him open. “Nothing dripping out of you, at least.” 

Xande’s thumb brushes across Raha’s hole, no pressure at all, and still Raha’s fingers curl around the arm of the throne beneath him. Even that feels more than Emet-Selch’s cock, _well_ more than the fingers which had so carefully prepared him for it that first, miserable time—then, even that had felt near unbearable. 

“Tight enough,” comes Xande’s gravelly voice. “I thought beasts incapable of such restraint.” Were Emet-Selch to say such a thing outside of a role, Raha can imagine it would be with a raised brow and an almost playful note—a dare, that his best enemy might parry the jab in their contest to first blood. Xande’s words carry no such affection. 

He presents his fingers ilms in front of Raha’s face, not demanding access to his mouth, but rather on offer: Raha would need reach out to lap at them. His knuckles, Raha notes with a bright, spiteful gladness, are bloodied from striking the crystal growing up Raha’s cheek. 

“Well? Do you not _want_ them wet?” 

Raha considers refusing. He has been made to take Emet-Selch’s fingers dry—never his cock—and that alone had been enough to leave bloody fingerprints on the jagged edges of Raha’s hips when Emet-Selch at last slicked his cock with oil and had him. Xande’s fingers, even larger still… 

Defeated, Raha bows his head to lave at them, collecting on his tongue all the saliva his fear-dried mouth will give him. There is little, and what he manages coats his tongue nearly as thick as Emet-Selch’s spend in his mouth; spreading it across the length of Xande’s fingers of his own will, Raha feels low and dirty in a way that stings worse than the backhand. He cannot bear to stop. 

Too quickly, Xande pulls his fingers away, and laughs at how Raha tries to follow them. “Needy thing.” 

His damp fingers slip between Raha’s cheeks to find his unused hole, and both of them together demand to press past his rim. Whether they are too dry or Raha is simply too tight, too small and not yet well enough broken-in, only the tip of one gains access; with Xande’s weight pressing down on his back, forearm draped across his shoulderblades, Raha can’t move enough to really struggle. Certainly not to get away. Not from Xande, not from Emet-Selch; not even from the pain of the intrusion, shallow as it is, wide as the head of any other man’s cock or wider. 

Xande says nothing to indicate disappointment or amusement or both, or any rationale when the very tip of his finger is removed, only ever barely in. Without permission Raha’s thoughts stray to being spared this, to being _too_ tight Emet-Selch deems the effect not worth the effort. He does not believe even for a moment the man who dreamed up an entire city in which he can play pretend would be so easily dissuaded—and Raha is proven horribly right, when Xande rearranges his hand so that he’s pressing only one in, at least to start. 

Raha regrets engaging in his own abasement, for Xande’s finger may as well be dry for all the help lapping so pathetically at them affords. He does not cry out, but only because he bites his split lip bloodier to prevent it as Xande’s fingertip forces itself inside of him, dragging rough against his inner walls as, with a jagged back-and-forth, Xande’s finger is at last seated to the knuckle. It is—Raha tells himself it is no worse than it is to take Emet-Selch’s cock without any more preparation than a bit of oil on his shaft. He can likewise withstand this. 

But where Emet-Selch is patient, Xande is not—or else he is simply more open in his willingness treat Raha as a thing for his use. Only the Allagans, those products of his own mind, had so wholly objectified him. As they handled him so does Xande: the full length of his finger is too deep and somehow both better and worse for being unmoving, forcing Raha open, offering no stimulation at all beyond the relentless pressure. 

He has barely steeled himself to it and then it is being pulled out, the drag against his rim already stretched to stinging worse even than the stretching itself—and then Xande must deem him loose enough, because on his next press there is the tip of his second finger, and Raha can only shudder, bound by Xande’s forearm across his back and the force of the fingers tearing into him. 

He doesn’t know quite when he began to cry, but by the time Xande’s fingers are half-deep Raha is sobbing, breathing in ragged gasps and clawing at the expanse of Xande’s thigh, as firm beneath him as marble. Fighting is worthless but as something for Raha to _do_ beyond accept his fate. 

But even as he fights he can feel Xande’s cock hard against his side and terrifyingly large, his girth tantamount to Raha’s own shin. Whether Xande is grinding against him or grinding _him_ against his cock, Raha cannot be sure, not until his arm shifts to take hold of Raha at the waist. It holds him close and steady for Xande’s fingers filling him up and Xande’s cock rutting against him, caught as it is between Raha’s side and his own belly. He writhes for the pain, and more for the useless hope he might be able to slip Xande’s—Emet-Selch’s grasp. 

That grasp tightens, and Raha is lifted without the slightest hint of strain, supported by nothing but the arm around his waist and the fingers inside him—and then to his horror his own hand, the crystal moving not of his volition to curl around Xande’s neck, and even knowing the unnatural strength within it Raha shakes to feel Xande release his waist. Screwing his eyes shut Raha fastens his other arm beside it: better he feel complicit than fail to hold his weight when he feels Xande’s freed hand between his thighs, taking hold of that cock. 

Xande’s fingers, seated fully inside of him, pull nearly out in a smooth motion that has Raha biting his own upper arm for the dry drag against his inner walls, made tender and pulled to tearing. In only so far as the first knuckle, they fill him as deeply as his own fingers can reach. Xande parts them and Raha’s rim strains for being pried apart, the air cold on overworked, overheated muscle never before stretched badly enough to be exposed to it. 

Raha thought he had known what it was to feel fucked open, loose and gaping for being worked past resistance on Emet-Selch’s cock, and his fingers afterwards. He had at times made it out to be a kindness for as much as Raha struggled in those first ████ taking his cock, both too thick and too long to be aught but pain when Raha had had only his own fingers, and even that not for years. His fingers drenched in oil Emet-Selch would open Raha slow and careful, even _gentle_ , his free hand wrapped around his own cock perhaps half the time and the remainder not bothering at all. He might choose to leave Raha full of unyielding—glass, he thinks it’s glass, both too hard and too smooth and far, far too wide just inside his rim; else he would repeat the process when next he spread Raha’s legs and upon examination found him “tight”. Were he this open in Emet-Selch’s lap, held above the head of his cock he would hardly need to be pulled down onto it, even without any more oil than that Emet-Selch’s fingers had left inside his hole. 

But he is not in Emet-Selch’s lap: held open so far he feels hollowed-out, still the head of Xande’s cock presses too big at his rim, not dry but hardly _wet_ , only enough that Raha thinks—fears—it will not be so painful for Xande that he might spare them both. 

But Xande withdraws his fingers at last, and it is no relief to be let to close even slightly, for he is taken by the hip and forced down. 

Raha sobs and shakes and _hates_ that he is grateful for the strength holding him in Xande’s hands and his control of the crystal both, so afraid is he of taking such a terrible pressure too deep—he would not without Xande’s intent, so tight he must force every ilm, but the fear is there nonetheless. Emet-Selch has tortured Raha to within an ilm of his life, but fucking him he only rarely leaves Raha more than sore and aching, for the pain of a tight hole forced to take a cock is felt by both parties and Emet-Selch’s masochism seems to end at living in his mausoleum of a city. How far Xande is willing to go Raha cannot be sure, and knowing the sorcerer’s magic knows no injury too severe to smooth away is no comfort when Raha knows well Emet-Selch desires him alive and broken-down. 

Raha can but cry out soundlessly for taking the head of Xande’s cock, each ilm deeper and wider around a new, impossible stretch that his rim cannot take—but somehow it does, and _he_ does. For all that Xande digs what are sure to become purple-black bruises into his hips in forcing Raha down onto his cock, it seems not to be past his body’s limits, and that in itself is a terrifying prospect: every breath is an agony, and the world as Raha knows it has all but fallen away completely beyond his straining hole, the way his body molds itself around Xande’s cock. This, and he is only taking the head of it; this, and if he has not torn around it yet Xande is not like to stop until he has penetrated him fully, and Raha’s stomach turns to even think how deep he might reach. 

Fear melts into exhaustion and together they overtake him, heavy like a stone; Raha falls limp in Xande’s arms, ceasing his pointless struggle to let himself be used like a doll however Xande might seek to wring his pleasure from Raha’s body. 

But the pain he fears—Raha loses count of his breaths and it does not come, Xande going still with only the head of his cock and perhaps another ilm holding Raha’s hole apart. He clings weakly to Xande’s shoulders, and when once again he feels Xande’s hand between his legs he dares not imagine what more awaits him. He wishes in a moment of weakness to lay his head against Xande’s chest. 

Raha sobs when Xande’s hand only curls around his own cock, the line of his hand knocking against Raha’s straining rim but no more; had he words at his disposal, they would be naught but a stream of _thank you, thank you, thank you_. 

Xande spills inside of him with a quiet groan and lifts him off his softening cock. Spend dripping down his thighs, Raha collapses boneless against Xande’s chest, his hands slipped from the emperor’s shoulders to the wide expanse of his bare chest. Shivering, he thinks only of breathing as Xande sinks two fingers into the fucked-out ruin of his gaping hole, finally slick and so open even his body can no longer struggle to keep him out. 

“Have you given up? You fought me before,” and Raha feels he should be able to recognize the note in Xande’s voice that he is nearly sure was not there before—disappointment? Upset? 

Raha wants to defend himself, though he could not say why, and he does not manage even a single word, only syllables he stumbles over. He doesn’t even know what he meant to say. 

“Oh, never mind. Don’t bother trying to think of an answer.” At last Xande leaves Raha empty—and even in his relief he _feels_ empty, his hole too well-used to close even now, Xande having taken his pleasure of it and placed nothing to hold it open in his absence. A kiss is pressed atop his head, or perhaps in looking down at his pet Xande has knocked accidentally against it; at his ear, Raha can feel the breath which carries Xande’s words. “I should have known better than to think you could.”


	3. On the Immortality of the Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly destroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and destruction, while something else, that which is the true man, endures forever—this question will be answered here for those willing to investigate our nature._
> 
> Plotinus IV.7.1

In the centuries since the day he offered himself up in sacrifice to the legacy of Allag, not once had Raha dreamed. Now, it seems he cannot stop. 

On more occasions than not, he sees Allag when he closes his eyes, and of _those_ most often he wakes breathless, linens stuck to sweat-dampened skin—as he does now, wrenched out of sleep like a drowning man out of water, all at once and gasping. Raha covers his mouth with his hands to mute the sound as he works to steady his panicked breaths, and does not otherwise move except the dart of his eyes to Emet-Selch beside him. This skill, he had quickly learned when first the dreams began to plague his rest: while he cannot control what cries he utters in the throes of a nightmare, if Emet-Selch is still sleeping when Raha breaks free of one he would much prefer not to disturb him. 

(Those occasions he does, Emet-Selch takes it upon himself to rouse him: Raha in an instant ripped from Xande’s clutches to find himself thrashing in Emet-Selch’s embrace, fingers carding through his hair and warm breath on the back of his neck. The tenderness makes Raha’s skin crawl, nightmarish in itself, and he shudders in Emet-Selch’s arms, wishing only that he might shake apart and _shatter_ so that Emet-Selch cannot hold him.) 

Though the dreams are by their nature distressing, they are not uniformly nightmares nor even always upsetting—more than once has found himself sharing a meal with fellow Miqo’te, and found nothing so much as curious but their more pronounced features, not yet diluted over millennia. From other dreams he wakes with a sense of disquiet but having had no ills befall him, or none his dream-self seemed to mind. On this occasion, there is no such ambiguity. 

He recognized it as Allag at once, so familiar in that dreamlike way the unfamiliar can be—though can it truly be called unfamiliar still, when he so often visits in his memories? In well-lit chambers, fellow slaves in tidy, plain uniforms groomed and dressed him, painting his eyelids with dark cosmetics which drew Raha’s attention in the silvered mirror to the bright, royal shade of his eyes. The fine red silks which draped but hardly concealed his slender figure highlighted them all the more, meant to provide the Emperor something to unwrap him from, and some amusement for the court in the reminder of their shared blood. Only Raha’s lips were left unadorned, not even stained: upon asking, knowing well the impossibility of taking the Emperor’s cock into his mouth, he was told of the potentiality the Emperor may wish to see Raha’s lips reddened in service to his fingers. 

“Duck your head,” someone ordered, and a gold collar was settled heavy around his neck, snapped shut and locked with the turn of a key he could feel in his collarbones; “Elbows on the counter,” and the unmistakable chill of an oiled metal plug pressed past his rim. Bracelets strung with precious gems were fastened around his wrists and ankles, and then a chain was clipped to the collar’s ring. A silent harem guard took hold of Raha’s leash, and led him to his fate. 

And he followed. He obeyed his orders to spread his legs and remove the plug, to beg for the Emperor’s cock and give thanks when it was granted him. Each and every order he obeyed, until Xande asked him, “Will you come for only my cock?” and Raha wished that he could but full as he was his cock rested soft against his thigh; had he only a hand upon it or permission to lay his own… but that was not the question he was asked. 

In his shame, he apologized effusively until the Emperor stopped up his words with fingers heavy on his tongue, and Raha was full glad not to be found wanting. “Enough of your brothers can,” Xande mused, watching rapt as Raha sucked contentedly on his fingers, as though they were a cock. “Perhaps you can be trained.” 

When he wakes, Raha can still taste them. He can feel his heartbeat pounding flighty in the confines of his ribcage; the tightness of the skin of his cheek, where the crystal’s roots make to forbid him his grimace. He finds himself thankful it is without a doubt a nightmare, glad of the panic in his chest. In the confines of the dream he had been accustomed to his abasement, believing as Xande did that he was nothing more than a hole to fuck. 

And he _hated_ , when he thought of it: hated Xande, hated Allag, hated his ever-absent lady mother Salina who dared not call for his audience. But more often he did _not_ think, and he knows not if it was an unwillingness or simple inability, when compliance required so much of him. 

Were the nightmares a tool in a campaign made to break his spirit, presenting to Raha in his sleep such a horrific version of himself he might gain sympathy for Emet-Selch’s cause, Raha could disregard it as a bit of creative manipulation and save himself at least some distress. But the dreams do not feel so coordinated: Allag is omnipresent, but little else remains consistent except by absence. Emet-Selch has not once appeared in body nor voice, and there is no crystal making good on its threat to overtake Raha’s flesh—the strength he feels is once again derived from his own ætheric well, and it alone. 

So it _is_ memory, Raha has decided, but if it is _his_ memory he finds himself uncertain. If all souls are fragments of Amaurotines, those long-sundered immortals Emet-Selch occupies himself with shades of, then they must die and be reborn again and again cyclically; it would then be possible so-called racial memories are themselves simply a tendency for souls to travel down a path in their reincarnation. It’s not impossible, then, these memories—often enough assaults—were imprinted on his particular soul, experienced in countless all-but-forgotten previous lives. 

Even lacking overt violence it’s abhorrent, that memory of being only three parts of a whole, how animal the level of his consciousness. Raha finds within himself a single onze of sympathy for Emet-Selch, fourteen parts and utterly impossible now with the loss of the Void to be among those who truly _think_ on the same level as he, even should he win his heart’s great desire. 

Raha wonders, even, if perhaps the distance he has felt from those on the First he thought self-inflicted (telling himself _do not get attached_ , for its fate remained uncertain) is in fact—even in the smallest part—a factor of being eight-times rejoined while they are reflections of only seven. 

Three-times rejoined and by all accounts he could not understand choices more intricate than _compliance makes it hurt less_ , his mind, if it can be called that, nothing but emotions and avoiding pain. Now eight-times rejoined he has still been mostly compliant, but because when he does not fight (or does, in the ways Emet-Selch wishes him to) it will satisfy his captor, and Raha ever holds onto hope that perhaps he can lure Emet-Selch into a snare that will see him make a mistake. 

—but he fears it is only the same calculus in more words and couched in excuses. His three-part soul could not fathom making a conscious choice that would lead to even temporary suffering, when by his actions he could possibly avoid it. 

So ███, he thinks, he will make it worse for himself. 

He turns to jostle Emet-Selch awake by the shoulder until he stirs, languid as always, showcasing vulnerability in a way which feels to Raha like a slap in the face. Before the Warrior of Light, Emet-Selch would not so much as appear in the flesh but send an illusion in his stead. Here in his dollhouse he will sleep beside his prisoner and not even bother to shake off his torpor. 

The moment he recognizes what Raha has done, the act—and it is an act, even if it is not meant as a threat—is dispelled. “You’ve never woken me before,” he says, and even were Raha unable to see him in the darkened room he would recognize the pleased smile in Emet-Selch’s voice. “Is aught amiss?” 

Raha meets him with a willful misinterpretation: “You hold me captive for daring to oppose your genocide. Or would you not call that amiss?” 

If anything Emet-Selch’s grin widens, the low warm lamplight reflecting off of his teeth. He moves with ease that belies his acuity: arching his back as he rolls onto his side, too close even before he drapes his arm across Raha’s chest. Raha feels the warmth of his breath on his cheek. “‘Genocide’,” he scoffs, fondly. 

By no means ætheric or physical does Emet-Selch restrain him; Raha lets his arms sit defiantly at his sides as Emet-Selch progresses through laying soft kisses upon the fragile skin of Raha’s eyelids to sucking bruises into what flesh remains of his throat. Rougher, then, than he has been these most recent ████. Raha can only surmise he’s seeking some reaction, that if he can’t have Raha return his touch by desire perhaps out of loathing—or worse, some animal instinct to fight. Raha cannot help but wonder when Emet-Selch’s touch demands nothing of him, and nor do his words. He is content, it seems, only to murmur against Raha’s skin soft-voiced praise—not rewarding any conscious action, but rather exalting for his mere existence, unsettlingly similar to surviving Allagan verse. 

Emet-Selch is more than generous with the oil, when at last he retrieves it. Warming it first with a burst of crisp æther, he carelessly parts Raha’s knees with the side of the cup he has made of his hand and lets the oil spill over and between Raha’s thighs. His fingers spread the oil further, hands skimming along Raha’s skin all the way to the back of his knees. Raha’s cock lays soft against his hip, a reprieve won of his prodigious experience, for there was a time any touch which did not hurt left his cock hard and his body wanting. 

Raha’s thighs are tense but the pressure he anticipates does not come, of Emet-Selch’s fingers working him open, instead taking himself in hand to spread yet more of the oil over his cock, and shifting his weight to lie between Raha’s thighs. The breadth of his shoulders ever feels constricting; there is an unsettling ease to a sorcerer near-all-powerful content to trap his prey by a force as mundane as gravity. 

The head of his cock lined up, Emet-Selch takes hold of Raha’s hips, thumbs curling around the tops of his thighs, and guides himself inside. Once, Emet-Selch’s own comfort dictated Raha be first opened up on oil-slicked fingers, and taking him without such preparations was all but unbearable; now, while it still hurts—Raha does not know if it is possible for someone of his size to take so much without pain, no matter how lingering the foreplay—his hole offers no real resistance. Raha wishes it were still difficult. He can be grateful, at least, that it hurts: pain is something to steel against, in some strange way easier to bear than the role of a lover. 

Emet-Selch is heedless of the distinction. He refuses to begin at once to _use_ Raha, but holds himself carefully still, waiting for the spasms of overworked muscle to quiet, searching Raha’s blank expression for any response either that it is already too much, or that he wants more. 

“In my memories,” Raha says softly, and waits until he has drawn Emet-Selch’s attention to continue, “they called Salina a bestializer for lowering herself to know even the name of the Miqo’te she took to her bed.” He watches defiant as Emet-Selch narrows his eyes—no doubt he wanted, perhaps even expected, some observation gained of experiencing a three-part soul. “What, I wonder, does that make you?” 

“Are you likening yourself to an animal?” He sounds tentative, even restrained. 

Raha presses. “Can you tell the difference?” 

A flutter of Emet-Selch’s eyelids as he rolls his eyes—not made angry as sometimes he is, as Raha was hoping, but frustrated in the way of any minor difference of opinion—is Raha’s only warning before he’s fucked. 

When first torture had given way to domestic violence, Emet-Selch had labored to find a way to prepare him that taking his cock did not hurt, but having exhausted his ideas without success he has simply accepted Raha’s pain as an inevitability and—not content to limit himself to fucking Raha’s thighs when taking his amusement—has Raha suiting his own mercurial tastes. A simple bit of conjury could dull the pain, if not erase it entirely. Emet-Selch does not once so much as try. 

But then, were he truly well-meaning, they would not share a bed at all. 

The first few thrusts are brutal even when Raha’s hole gapes, opened up on fingers or kept plugged in expectation of Emet-Selch’s cock, but no amount of training will accustom Raha’s body to being filled so deeply; Emet-Selch’s cock must take its habitual place by force. Oil means Raha will not be left with bloodied thighs, but it cannot loosen his hole, only make it easier for Emet-Selch to carve out a space within him, too slick to forbid entrance. Emet-Selch’s thrusts are full and deep, pulling out until only the head is still inside him, fucking back in with a single smooth motion, assured of Raha’s submission in body if not mind. 

Raha scrambles for words, improvising for need to make some voluntary sound and not only those huffs he cannot help after each snap of Emet-Selch’s hips. “Are you—” he spits—and is forbidden a chance to continue. Emet-Selch fists his hand in Raha’s hair, loose from its braid, between his ears, and tugs back Raha’s head, tilting it up as he ducks his own. For a single, awful moment, Raha thinks he will be kissed—a violation which, despite Emet-Selch’s incessant romanticism, he has thus far been spared. Instead, Emet-Selch catches Raha’s lower lip between his teeth. 

Raha tries to speak despite the sharp pull it makes in his captured lip, not even knowing himself what he means to say: he hopes for some insult to fall instinctive from his tongue, and fears it’s a simple _no_. Whatever it is, he never gets it out, the word or words dying on his tongue when Emet-Selch thumbs the delicate skin of the inside edge of his ear. 

Raha thrashes without thought, head whipping to the side and ears flat, the only mercy granted him that Emet-Selch’s fingers do not keep their hold but snag in his hair, dragging him back. Raha swallows, loud in the room otherwise empty; his lips fall open seeking to fill his lungs with cool air, and Emet-Selch again takes the lower. Raha cries out despite himself, almost but not quite into Emet-Selch’s mouth, for this is _not_ a kiss. 

Raha settles into a willful acceptance, and—as usual—when enough pitiful sounds have escaped his throat, Emet-Selch considers his work done. He lifts himself on his elbows to admire his own doing: Raha laves at his swollen lip to check the damage, the taste of blood copper-bright on his tongue. 

And Emet-Selch is— _captivated_ , watching him. Disgust churning in his belly, Raha throws his arm to hide himself and perhaps buy himself even an instant to spit out words lest Emet-Selch try to steal this too from him: “Are we not all beasts to you? I didn’t think even you so contrary to change your tune simply because I agree.” 

The pause following is broken only by the breaths which chase the thrusts, Emet-Selch’s first and Raha’s on their heels. 

Emet-Selch stills deep inside, and Raha whines: for all it hurts when he moves it is worse when he does not, and Raha is left only with unbearable fullness. “You still believe that,” Emet-Selch says quietly. Raha cannot tell if it is a question, and will not answer besides. Emet-Selch rises from his elbows, seeking distance to inspect Raha’s features, and Raha does likewise; for a man who had said in as many words _I do not consider you to be truly alive; ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you_ , he has no right to look so upset. 

“You laugh off accusations of genocide,” Raha challenges while the advantage is his. “Are we sentient, or aren’t we?” 

He thinks for a short while that Emet-Selch will not answer him, having trapped himself in a corner and still pretending for some reason that he does not lie. He fucks Raha steady, the oil on his thighs leaving dark, wet stains on the linens, and when he does deign to reply it is a near-idle murmur into Raha’s cheek: “You could be.” 

Raha turns his head, an attempt to gain even an ilm of separation; he knows it is futile even before Emet-Selch follows him. “Then you grant dignity to those of the Source,” Raha argues, fighting to keep his voice steady, fighting at _all_ —while he is no match for Emet-Selch in strength or ætheric aptitude, and has no avenue of escape from this assault or any other cruelty Emet-Selch may choose to visit upon him, what Emet-Selch does not have, and _must_ not have, is Raha’s mind. 

“No,” Emet-Selch says without delay. “Most of them will die, be it in the Calamities themselves, or the ages spanning between them. But you, Exarch, are undying.” His lips drag dry across Raha’s cheekbone; Raha screws his eyes shut, as if he only closes them tightly enough it will block out the words. “You could be more. You will be.” 

“No,” Raha says for the first time in ████, and it is not for the invasion of his body, terrible as it is, Emet-Selch hardly trying and yet dirtying the deepest, untouched parts of him; nor is it even for the drag of Raha’s own soft cock against his belly. It is the assuredness in Emet-Selch’s proclamation, and the intimacy by which he delivers it—that Raha _will_ accept him, no matter how many rejoinings he must first witness at Emet-Selch’s side. Of course it would benefit Raha to agree, that he might be released from his prison, and even were he too late to shepherd the First to salvation to try again wherever next the Emissary’s ambitions lie. Of course Raha desires the knowledge held in Amaurot’s vast storage banks, or an Ascian’s long memory—of course Raha does not want to _die_ —he is only unwilling to pay the price of millions that not even for his own sake but for _Raha’s_ Emet-Selch might lead to slaughter. 

_You will be,_ he promises. Apotheosis atop the corpses of uncountable millions across the Source and all her reflections, as if Emet-Selch has not already transmuted him into something beyond mortality through the remove of his great work—and none had needed force Raha to accept _its_ bargain. Now the crystal’s roots are in his heart, and like any parasite will starve him to feed itself, empowering Emet-Selch to own him more completely with every ilm of his flesh it climbs. Raha cannot imagine any gift of Emet-Selch’s he would welcome. 

Raha swallows hard and still his voice wavers. “No. You weave promises all the while you hurt me.” 

“I have,” Emet-Selch says. “I won’t again.” 

“But you _are_ ,” Raha pleads, little enough use though it is. Emet-Selch says he does not lie; Raha does not believe him, but believes Emet-Selch’s own conviction in the claim. That he makes such a promise in the midst of, of what even the most deluded of men would struggle to claim Raha could possibly desire—he _believes_ this. 

“Even now?” Emet-Selch asks, a fondly placating little smile playing at his lips. His hand, still slick with the oil smeared across Raha’s skin, wraps around his cock, intent apparently not to allow Raha even the refuge of his own softness. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Raha insists, but it sounds far more like a plea, like the mewling kitten he becomes in his dreams, and he shakes his head to hear himself. Emet-Selch already thinks he does not know his own mind—he will think Raha confused, contradicting himself, in need of such guidance only Emet-Selch can provide. Raha can hardly bear the shame to hear himself in his dreams—his memories—pleading with Xande _yes please, yes more_. He cannot let Emet-Selch know the sounds he makes when he is driven to desperation. 

“Come for me,” and Raha hears not the permission Emet-Selch would no doubt claim were he pressed but the order it is at its heart. Tears pricking in the corners of his eyes, he yearns to disobey. It is impossible on Xande’s cock—he has never felt anything but pain on it, far too big, unavoidably too _much_. Emet-Selch’s likewise is not painless, cannot be, for surely if it were possible by physical means he would employ them now and he does not, only the rough drag of his cock inside of Raha, fucking into him now he has decided upon reciprocity at an angle that puts pressure on Raha’s prostate alongside the smarting of his worn rim and the ache in his hips. 

Though Emet-Selch has asked on more than one occasion as pillow talk after requiring of him a show, Raha has never admitted to his own private habits in pleasuring himself, nor in all their long acquaintanceship has Emet-Selch ever caught him so compromised. Ascians are not omniscient, no matter how Emet-Selch likes to play the part, nor are they mind-readers: he cannot know, then, what Raha sees when he would imagine himself a pet beneath some great king, alone in his dormitory bed with one hand about his cock and the other between his legs, two or even three fingers curled inside of himself. This is coincidence, not malice. Not more than usual. 

Still he’s humiliated when it proves enough: flushed hot across his face and down his neck until crystal overtakes it, not more than half-hard when Emet-Selch wins from him tears and spend alike, an unmistakable cockiness all about him for forcing pleasure upon his captive. 

Emet-Selch’s only remaining kindness is to shift his grip from Raha’s cock to his knee, all but encircling it, mixing Raha’s own mess with the oil Emet-Selch has left there. Were Raha ever able to prevent him, were he ever stronger, he is not now. Emet-Selch lifts his leg, presses him open, takes his fucked-loose hole only deeper; Raha chooses to accept the mercy Emet-Selch must intend, to be allowed to lie back and only be taken, the same as Xande does in every nightmare. So long as he remains steadfast he need not save himself from this single instance of physical cruelty. It is enough he may yet save himself from the Ascian’s attempts to persuade him that any living thing is so lowly as to be unworthy of life, even—especially—should Raha himself not be counted among them.


	4. On Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There are Souls to whom earthly beauty is a leading to the memory of that in the higher realm and these love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to this memory do not understand what is happening within them, and take the image for the reality._
> 
> Plotinus III.5.1

Xande tugged on Raha’s leash to stir him from the half-sleep he’d begun to slip into. He was full, but not unbearably so, keeping Xande’s cock warm. Raha lifted his head off the wide expanse of Xande’s chest to look up at his Emperor, and made an inquisitive sound. It didn’t feel like he was growing hard again. 

Xande only answered him with a scratch behind Raha’s ear and a thumb across Raha’s cheekbone, where at the end of the day there were always stains from the remains of the cosmetics they smear around his eyes. Raha parted his lips, but Xande did not slip that thumb past them. He hooked it beneath Raha’s arm, and lifted him from his cock. Raha unfolded his stiff knees as Xande made to place him on the floor, gently, and murmured his gratitude as he laid his head on his arms to nap. 

He feels like his eyes have barely closed when Xande reaches for him again, hand so big around Raha’s wrist that his thumb is almost in the crook of Raha’s elbow. He’s pulled into Xande’s lap—although had the Emperor only twitched the leash, Raha would have climbed up into his place himself. Xande presses two fingers in his hole, adding more oil for his next use, and it feels to Raha there is barely enough space inside him for only that. 

But Xande thinks he’s loose enough—he must, because he slips out his fingers, and lets Raha settle in his lap. He doesn’t feel loose, not like he should. Even hours without his plug replaced, he should be open and gaping. Perhaps he _has_ slept, comfortable at Xande’s feet, and is only still tired because he has not shaken it. 

Xande’s cock is soft between their bodies, but Xande does not reach for it, nor lead Raha’s hands to it. Instead his hands are on Raha. Xande caresses him, leaving trails of oil across his skin, skimming his sides and legs. He feels on his throat what at first seems to be the soft press of lips, but realizes that in his sleepiness he must be mistaking something, like the swipe of a thumb wet with come, or Raha’s own tears. He clings to Xande’s arms, holding still and bearing it, fighting his instinct to pull away from the unfamiliar touch. It displeases Xande when he does. Soon, he reminds himself, Xande will grow hard, and then Raha will know what to do again. 

But he doesn’t: his cock stays soft laying against Raha’s belly. Xande continues to touch him, tenderly as he would a consort. Raha cannot help but feel mocked, the spectre of his mother heavy above him. Then he _is_ kissed, and these are unmistakably kisses: his lover is lowering his head and pressing his lips to the place where Raha’s neck and shoulder meet. But that makes no sense. Xande has never, _would_ never—but neither does it look like Xande, somehow, hair dark and frame not half as imposing, bent low to work his mouth up Raha’s neck to the underside of his jaw. 

Raha dismisses the thought as drowsy confusion, and even were it not, Xande is a mage most powerful besides. It is perfectly within his ability to suit his appearance to his whims, and it is not Raha’s place to notice unless instructed to. 

He has not been instructed to anything, and yet he feels something is wanted of him. Raha only does not know _what_. Taking action without permission is always dangerous, and Raha is a fool to even consider it with the Emperor… but what choice does he have? Those pets who have fallen out of Xande’s favor face little but scorn whether they be kept in the palace or sent to the army. Raha lifts his own hand to Xande’s jaw, letting his fingers brush the strong line of it. He’s careful not to meet the Emperor’s eyes. “Like this, my lord?” 

Xande’s hands wrap around Raha’s waist and shove him off his lap, and Raha thanks the gods for their mercy, for without it his head should have collided with the floor for how fast and violent the act is, and the strength that Xande should wield. Raha looks as near to Xande’s face as he has yet dared, and from Raha’s periphery his expression is unreadable. 

If the gods are truly merciful, he may yet be allowed to make up for his transgression. 

Raha picks himself up to his knees, feeling the Emperor’s spend drip down his thighs. He wonders if he he’s bled more than usual, for as thin the mess is that seeps out of him. Only for its warmth does it feel any different from oil. 

Raha is Xande’s favorite of his harem, and the most beautiful, and as such he has been granted the privilege of using his hands where the others are permitted only their mouths. Xande cannot fit past his own lips even soft, no matter how Raha tries; he curls both hands around the thickness of it, and kisses the tip of the head as though he has been offered Xande’s signet. 

Raha opens his mouth to suck at the slit in his cockhead, to taste Xande and offer him at least as much pleasure as that, but the limit of his jaw never seems to present itself. Xande’s foreskin catches on Raha’s teeth and then the whole of his cockhead is in Raha’s mouth. 

“No,” Xande says—shaken? That can’t be right. His fingers coil in Raha’s loose hair and wrench his head up, pulling Raha off his cock. Fear burns bright within him—he does not know why he errs, only that he _does_. Those pets Xande tires of that have well pleased him are given to the general use of the palace; those who have not are his gifts to his soldiers, fellow Miqo’te who do not treat kindly those they feel have been pampered all the while they toil and suffer. But if Raha continues like this he need no longer fear either fate, for Xande in his mercy will wrap his fingers around Raha’s throat and wring the life from him from the seat of his throne. 

Raha stays kneeling, forehead pressed to Xande’s inner thigh, and tries only to breathe. Raha clutches to desperate hope this is a nightmare when Xande above him begins speaking nonsense, “No, Exarch. No. I have treated you as a beast but _once_. I cannot be made to do it again.” 

Each word Raha hears, he understands, but altogether they mean nothing to him, worse than nothing; it is not the mad ramblings of senility but a coherent thought, only one Raha cannot make sense of. How could a rational man reconcile insisting upon the dignity of his captive, one individual among the lesser races he built an empire to subjugate? 

Raha dares a glance upwards to find Xande’s features twisted into a rictus, and his heart pounds in his chest. “I—I beg this of my most merciful and terrible ruler, He who by might of invincible words covers the land in His radiance… O lord of all great divine powers whose name is established to the ends of the worlds, I beg of you your forgiveness, for I do not understand the enormity of my transgressions.” Displeasure— _disgust_ —crosses the face of He whose name shall echo eternal, ringing out until oblivion unto the depths of those oldest forgotten places. Raha quickly looks at the floor, and his heart sinks for what he sees. So far has he fallen even the crystal seems for him to be losing its luster, the facets carved into his own body dull where the Tower gleams. 

“For—” but Raha falters, and not only from fear. Recollection turns fluid like a dream, and he no longer knows how long he has been kept in service to his Emperor, if it has been finite or the entirety of his life. He knows nothing but— _no_ , but there _was_ a time before, a hazy memory which he can only perceive for the shadow it casts on what Raha knows himself to be. Though he searches, he cannot attach any name to its nature, but he is certain—as certain as he can be in any knowledge so far beyond his station—that it once existed. “For years I have been honored by your service, to bring pleasure to He who like a torch illuminates the land from the heavens, most favored son of the gods. I beg of you, O my great lord whose very name is merciful, let me make use of my mouth to worship you, let it be filled with your holy seed as the fields are sown.” The Emperor’s frown is deep, his hand slipping from Raha’s hair to cup his cheek, only gently yet. Raha swallows hard, for if in his life he is granted only one more plea he knows what it must be: “You have taken me to your bed before. You laid down between my thighs, and I looked at you with sweet admiration, and you were _pleased_. O peerless lord, I beg you—” 

“Look at me,” says the Emperor, whose word is absolute, whose voice wavers. There is something wrong here, dreadfully wrong; something that goes beyond Raha simply losing his lord’s favor. “Raha. Look at me.” 

At the sound of his name Raha’s head snaps up, and without regard meets the eyes of—of Emet-Selch, and he is not looking up from the floor to his throne but level across a bed, and he can see the—he hopes it is a lucid dream, fears it is a corrupted memory—he sees it for what it is, an impression overlaid upon reality—no, upon Amaurot. For an instant he _knows_ this as surely as in this moment he knows he is the Exarch, and Raha—as surely as Emet-Selch knows him, to call him by name. 

Raha is wide-eyed as he is pulled up—across—and into his Emperor’s arms, smaller than they should be. There are ribs beneath Raha’s hands where he should feel muscle. Fingers card through his hair and do not pull it, and none of this is right, but there is a part of him, no, _three_ parts of him that are nothing but emotion, all-encompassing, drowning out will and sense until there is only instinct. It seeks out the tender touch, rubs its cheek into the palm of its lover’s hand. 

The Emperor holds Raha’s head, cradling it. He could catch Raha by the hair and take what he wants, but he isn’t. Raha has never before been _kissed_ , but undeniably what the Emperor draws him up into now is one, not simply using Raha’s mouth—he _is_ , but only for Raha’s inexperience. He parts his lips for the touch of the Emperor’s tongue, and it presses past them; he strokes Raha’s tongue with his own, and Raha feels as though he is being bid to follow. But he has never done this, was never taught: not in the harem, or by anyone at school, or by Emet-Selch— 

Raha breaks the kiss to catch his breath as it gasps and halts; Emet-Selch has no need of breath, but does so as well, matching Raha in pace and raggedness of—for him it must be romance. It is too close to be anything else: Emet-Selch’s lip against the corner of Raha’s mouth, sharing his breath only for the sake of it. A spiteful part of him longs to shove Emet-Selch away, for all the good it will do; when he had, a few times after recovering from his gunshot wound and before he had learned better, it had only made Emet-Selch worsen whatever pain he caused Raha to suffer. 

But Emet-Selch offers no pain, and Raha cannot lift his hands of his volition besides, only feel his own lips speak and listen, horrified, to his own voice, sounding at once just like and nothing like himself. “Anything that will please you, my Lord, anything, and what I do not know I will learn for your favor.” The man in whose lap he sits, Emet-Selch, pulls taut like a bowstring, and Raha fears—not fear that would see him cower from a beating from his master, but dread as befits a sorcerer bored to genocide. 

Raha is shoved from his lap and grateful for it, and of the walls around them dissolving from the gleaming blue of the Crystal Tower to expose the dull gold of Amaurot—less so of Emet-Selch looming though they are side by side, his size made magnified by the way he sits while Raha lays on his back, knees pulled up. Emet-Selch is more disgusted than he has ever looked, less angry than _shaken_. It is unnerving; Raha turns his head away, seeking refuge in his own distress, and Emet-Selch lets him. 

“You would never act like that,” he says, with anger carefully measured. “ _You_ would never. Not as you are now.” Raha does not discern his argument, and thus does not know how best to avoid it; but in silence Emet-Selch always quests to fill it with more of his own voice. Raha hates the way he can recognize the concern in it. “Do you know who you are?” 

“The Crystal Exarch,” Raha says carefully. 

Emet-Selch lets his shoulders fall in a release of tension. “Then can’t you comprehend the horror of it? Do you have any awareness at all when you’re—” but he cuts himself off with only a _tch_ , like he can’t bring himself to make the words. 

“At times,” Raha admits, too shaken still to improvise a lie even passingly convincing out of anything else. 

“This time?” Emet-Selch seeks. 

“…Yes.” 

Emet-Selch closes his eyes for the length of a learned exhale. “Then you have felt what it is to be three parts of a whole, when you are eight. A simpering, thoughtless _thing_ trembling in fear for my every touch.” Raha turns his face down, where if he had his cowl even the hard set of his mouth would be hidden. 

“I could do without the reminder.” Raha’s voice is softer than he’d like. 

“It’s _horrible_ ,” Emet-Selch says plainly. “It’s _nothing_.” 

Without daring to focus on Emet-Selch for fear of the vulnerability he would find upon that tired face, Raha nods. 

The anger in Emet-Selch’s voice falls quiet. “That’s what it’s _always_ like, to be among you, you half-alive things. Decaying faster than you live. Writhing helplessly in the shadows that you think make a world. Even you, Exarch,” he adds, a seemingly casual afterthought that can well be neither, and Raha reflexively bristles, long conditioned to distrust any time Emet-Selch sees fit to single him out among mortals. It tends to be worse the more fond he makes it sound. “You alone are eight times rejoined. You alone have taken his first wobbling steps out of mortality. Willing to give up your body in sacrifice to nothing more than an enchanted bit of rock,” he drags the pads of bare fingers across the back of Raha’s right hand, even once Raha curls it into a tight fist, “all to cling to what you call life.” 

Raha opens his mouth, but Emet-Selch moves and simply _thinks_ faster. He always has. “Yes, yes. You needed more time to work your scheme. I won’t claim it wasn’t clever, given your limitations. But that bravery, Exarch, that fire… you steal immortality, yet spurn me when I offer you a way to restore the eternal soul that is already yours.” 

A long pause falls over them: it isn’t a question, and Raha has no desire (nor need, he insists to himself) to mount a defense. Emet-Selch draws his arms back to himself and curls forward, elbows on his thighs, neck bent and head low. 

“I so rarely show another the world in truth… But for a short while, at least, you could see as I do.” He shakes his head for Raha’s silence. “You aren’t even curious? Knowledge for its own sake?” 

Raha is, in truth—or at least at times he has been. He keeps his mouth set. 

Emet-Selch waits longer than usual before he continues, turning his head without raising it, eyeing Raha, scrutinizing him for any doubt, perhaps, any flicker of interest. “I suppose it isn’t a fair question. I don’t know that even you are capable of understanding, as you are. But let us find out.” 

The magic to work this illusion—if it is an illusion—is unlike any Raha has seen, in that Emet-Selch must _concentrate_. Raha watches him close his eyes, tilt his head back. His lips part, but he does not speak, at least no sound which Raha can hear; his fingers knot themselves in his skirts— 

And then there is nothing. 

—and _then_ , then there is _everything_ , and Raha cannot hold onto the sound of his own scream in the flow of—of perception, of being. He is lost, a single soul in the swift-flowing Lifestream, throwing out his hands and finding them absent. He looks toward Emet-Selch, where he was, where Raha thinks he was when he existed in four dimensions and not—fourteen, fourteen it must be, but he cannot count, when those he can see are too great for his field of vision, move too quickly for his flickering eyes to follow, and those he _cannot_ see are agonizing sound, and color he does not _see_ but rather feels in the way it resonates in his bones, in his very æther, so great it threatens to shatter the weak bonds which tie his soul to itself, as Emet-Selch had done time and again to the crystal, tearing it apart atom by atom with but a snap of his fingers. 

It is worse than the Rift, that barrier none were meant to cross and live, which Raha entered a scared child and left holding his head which ached for the tears spilled into his coiled hands, afraid to open his eyes for fear of what abyss of a world his gravest error had led him to if his resolve had wavered but an instant during his incantation, afraid to hear or speak or think for fear he _had_ arrived on the First but too late, or too early, or simply at the cost of his sanity. 

For an eternal instant he had known the spectrum of swirling æther and he is knowing it again, far too much and far, far too away, everywhere and nowhere and every time and no time at all in the self-same _now_. It hurts, it hurts, and like he had clung to then he seeks the tenuous little connection to his body as if it is a long ways off but neither can he pull it closer or move it or move himself, as though he never was a body at all, never possessed or felt or _was_ any more than the consciousness which can live in any space and none at all, in this vastness or in the voids between the atoms of that fragile, ephemeral beating heart and breathing lungs he had somehow called _his_. 

He sees it now on the bed, when he can see the silhouette he knows at all, the body he has ever thought himself scant ilms from Emet-Selch’s thigh, curled up in on itself clutching at sheets as if to make a cocoon, aware suddenly and horribly of its own fragility, of the purpose it holds—a thing to be grown out of. He is looking down upon it, upon himself, and the room which felt so vast in his limitations now feels so confining if he could run he would throw himself from its windows—for the soul is immortal and eternal and cannot be quenched for any tether so short as death. 

But G’raha Tia is bound by it still, sobbing, screaming, and Raha wants to scream alongside him, but when he finds the organ or—or _concept_ that allows him to bend sound he can no longer form the pitch. 

Emet-Selch is speaking to him. 

It is static and it is words, words he is not meant to hear, and he cannot _hear_ it but knows it is speech, its chords drawn out and bundled together at intervals like words and meaning strung out on them in the way that music moves the soul through unclear manipulations, to tears or to laughter or to awe. With its speech that is not language, that is beyond it, that can only be conceived of as _communication_ at its most pure, not moving in waves but simply made manifest intent of æther and æther alone, it says _I am Hades_ , the soul that is Solus zos Galvus and Xande and Ox’Dalan and below it all the being without equal which holds the title Emet-Selch. _Who are you?_

He thinks his own—mouth, that thing which you speak through is called a mouth, and he thinks his is moving. He turns his being to their meaning, and he can feel them on his lips and tongue, yes, those which can shape vibrations into words and notes and cries. “I—” he says, but he does not know who that is, too far away from it. 

“Forget the world,” he is told by Hades, and the colors dim, and Raha closes his eyelids and covers his face with his hands and it removes sight-perception but he sees the hues unchanged with the double vision of two warring scales, his body and his soul, and Hades within them as a beacon and a constant. _Close._ Raha reaches out, tries, and something that is not touch grasps something that is not his hands. 

“There is more,” he is beckoned. “More of you. More of _him_ ,” and the sound conjures something he has no name for, or something that _has_ no name, something on the edges of his terrible, endless perception, familiar and foreign. 

“No more,” he cries, and not in the same endless moment but that very _instant_ the colors fade into darkness. His own agonal gasps become the only sound which reaches his ears flat against his head, and he clings to the cool tiled floor on hands and knees with sweat and tears and saliva pooled beneath him, unaware of how he came to be there. Outside of himself there are only faint impressions of the outlines of things which shine less brightly now than anything else in Raha’s perception, so faint they’re eclipsed all but entirely by the glow of lamps kept ever dim, even of the streetlights far below and that interminable Light which reaches them through malms of seawater. He has no idea what they are—not a name, not any description which can capture their nature. He knew, once, but it is fading from his consciousness like the forms themselves—perhaps he could remember, if he only reached out and touched them? He wants to, and the æther that is his consciousness finds his arm, pouring in through the branches of nerves to to fill it and reach out his hand; they slip like shadows beneath his touch. They must be so, so far away. 

“What do you seek?” says the man known to him as Emet-Selch, sitting on the edge of a bed. 

Raha opens his mouth, and he cannot even mimic the chord—and when that sequence too fades from his awareness he tries any he remembers as from half-known dreams, his own name, or Emet-Selch’s, those concepts so foundational it seems he could not forget them and remain even the weakest semblance of himself, and all he manages are choked half-syllables, like no language known to him or Eorzea, or Norvrandt, or even Amaurot. 

He is picked up off the floor by the wrist and led to stand on trembling legs between Emet-Selch’s thighs to be pulled into another kiss, silencing him. Raha lets his mouth go still, lets his jaw fall and Emet-Selch use him, to take his mouth as his prize no doubt in his satisfaction after what has brought Raha as close as he has ever come to losing himself—to Emet-Selch’s victory. It is worse, somehow, than the last, when he had not been able to identify the man acting his lover; Raha has known Emet-Selch for who he is, how terrible in every sense his soul. 

“It’s all right,” says Emet-Selch when he is through with Raha’s mouth, lips against his cheek. Raha frowns—he sounds as upset, somehow, as Raha does in his own mind, and _he_ has no right to it. “You did as well as you could. Better than I even hoped,” and Raha chokes on his own sob, because he cannot imagine any feeling worse—to imagine _imagining_ such a thing is enough to make him dry-heave. It disrupts his balance; Emet-Selch catches him, arms around his shoulders. 

He guides Raha through several tiny steps, then to sit on the edge of the bed, then to lift his legs when he cannot coordinate them. At once Raha tenses his arms and body and anything he can to turn away, curling in on himself; to his shock Emet-Selch lets him, and Raha cannot even feel the ever-present weight of his gaze. “One day soon this will not feel so overwhelming,” he promises, and he feels far away—neither touching Raha nor facing him, from the direction of his voice. 

He leaves, after, and the room is truly silent, and Raha wishes he could be glad to be alone with his own thoughts, in his bed which is far too big even with Emet-Selch beside him, for the first time in ████.


	5. That Which is Beyond Being Does not Think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What stands above Being stands above intellection: it is no weakness in it not to know itself, since as pure unity it contains nothing which it needs to explore._
> 
> Plotinus V.6.6

███████, Emet-Selch returns from wandering the dead husk he calls his city—or so Raha must assume that is how he occupies himself in his brooding. As he knows his shades are without true awareness so too must he know Raha is without true admiration, adoration, even that so desperately, pathetically sought _love_. Still, when he cannot have Raha in the truth he ever claims to revere, Emet-Selch falls back upon the talent for delusion upon which all Amaurot is built, and returns to their bed to play pretend. 

Raha has not had half so long to perfect the art of lying to himself, but chooses to pretend the waking nightmare of a world made unsundered was not meant as a gift, but merely a failed ploy to break him. 

He has enough nightmares of late. 

“Father left this hole too loose,” the lord—the prince—said. “It’s no _fun_ alone.” Raha buried his face in the prince’s shoulder as his tail was wrenched back, forcing his hips up. Xande never—he liked to show Raha off, of course, have him sit on his cock or kneel before his throne as a bit of decoration for guests. But he had never bent Raha over only to lift his tail and have him spread open to let anyone else look at his hole. No matter how loose or tight he kept it he would never want to share what was _his_. 

But Raha was no longer Xande’s favorite, hardly ever called upon now in favor of younger, prettier pets. Tail up and knees apart his hole was put on display—and even with the prince’s cock inside of him, Raha wasn’t full. Oil and spend dripped down Raha’s thighs, but only those: Raha’s hole was too well-used to bleed for only this. A second man swiped his fingers through the mess and pressed them into his gaping rim. They curled, and pried him open; his hole strained and pushed and felt close to breaking as it was stretched. It only stopped when Raha was open enough to make enough space for the head of another man’s cock. Holding Raha’s rim apart, he pressed it to the entrance, as thick again as the prince’s. 

“Well?” demanded the—nobleman? After so many Raha could no longer tell them apart. Raha did not think he was asked any question, and he did not know what answer the nobleman sought. He whined into the prince’s shoulder, and the nobleman took pity, offering him an order: “Beg for it like you used to beg Xande.” 

Raha opened his mouth to find it dry; it _hurt_ , and he could not remember the entreaties he offered Xande to be granted the privilege to warm his cock, could not find any words at all. 

“Father did a number on you,” the prince said, and his laugh was deep beneath Raha’s hands clutching at his chest. “Are you certain this one _can_ speak?” 

“If it can’t speak, then why is its mouth empty?” 

Raha screwed his eyes shut, forcing the tears from them, in the fear that it is their color which earned him such hard use. The nobleman pushed forward—slowly, it must be slowly, wet but forcing Raha’s hole apart ilm by ilm. Once it was able to take the Emperor, but his hole had been well-trained then. It was kept full even when he slept, and stretched by attendants to show him how much it needed to open, even though it hurt. And once he had the Emperor, he was fucked often enough it was usually loose—at least it felt loose when they put in the big plug after, and Xande’s come still dripped out of his open rim. 

The prince was not so merciful. When he slipped his hand under Raha’s silk and found his hole already wet with come, he made Raha sit on his cock, and didn’t help him at all when it hurt and his thighs trembled so badly. The nobleman was worse. The plugs and stretching stopped when Xande had grown tired of him, so the prince helped hold him down while the nobleman bruised his hips and overcame the struggling hole. When they held his wrists behind his back and started to fuck him, Raha needed every shred of his strength not to bite down onto the prince’s fingers, thrust past his lips to stroke his tongue, as he sobbed. 

Emet-Selch shakes him awake and Raha finds his cheeks wet with tears, sweat slicking his hair to his forehead and gathering in the small of his back. His throat hurts, and that Raha can recognize as being worn ragged from screaming. The more he becomes aware of himself, the more Raha knows he ought to spurn Emet-Selch’s touch, the cruelty he spins as comfort. But some shamefully weak part of him—perhaps the same three parts—longs for any touch that is not debasement, any embrace which does not hurt, and if he told himself it was longing for the Warrior of Light and he alone, Raha would be a liar. 

What Emet-Selch has done to his mind in showing Raha that unsundered vision of the world is far worse than what abuses of his body the Allagans had ever mustered. By all rights a nightmare, once recognized as such, ought to be as water off an amaro’s back when he has seen in Emet-Selch’s reality the most abhorrent of all things—and yet, Raha cannot shake the urge to seek out comfort from the worst of all monsters he has yet known, if he cannot have it from his greatest hero. 

Should he close his eyes, the tenderness in the touch might not feel so different, with Raha’s imagination his only guide. Has he not earned a white lie? Emet-Selch’s hands are likely softer, unaccustomed to any work he cannot accomplish by sorcery; he kisses without a hint of shyness, and for this one moment perhaps Raha can allow himself to pretend that passion is his champion’s. 

“Please,” he murmurs, desperation clear in his voice. It is too much to hope he is not heard. 

Emet-Selch’s thumb rubs circles against the tender skin of Raha’s wrist, trapping him only incidentally to the embrace. Raha doesn’t know if he would be allowed to shake himself free, for he has not tried. “What’s that?” he asks, pressing a kiss atop Raha’s head between his ears. 

“You treat me like a person,” says Raha softly, and then, shaking his head, corrects, “like I’m worth something.” He hates himself. It is far too much to hope Emet-Selch will not make him say it. “I—I need you.” Let Emet-Selch think _only_ he will do, if he is so inclined; that he is not simply all Raha has but all he might desire. 

Emet-Selch pulls him closer, tucking Raha’s head beneath his chin, his arm draping across Raha’s waist and bringing his wrist along with it, long fingers winding in Raha’s own. His cock is soft and warm against the back of Raha’s thigh, banishing the ghost of the prince’s. 

For █████ they lay like that, coiled together, unmoving save for the rise and fall of Raha’s chest; this alone should be enough to turn his stomach, and Raha despises that he has grown used to it—complacent in Emet-Selch’s clutches, like he has been _tamed_. Emet-Selch brings up their laced fingers to the center of Raha’s chest, where for now his heart still beats beneath flesh not yet given way to crystal. 

It is only a matter of time, should Emet-Selch be so kind or cruel to allow him it. Like a cancer, the crystal consumes him further each passing day, and when there are once again days to pass it will carry on in its mission, implacable, until nothing of G’raha Tia remains. Even in his weakest moments he must not forget that Emet-Selch’s was the hand to raise it, and his scheming which compelled Raha to bind himself to it and it to him, with the Crystal Exarch born of the union. No matter how sweet his promises, Emet-Selch’s dying wish will see Raha and all he holds dear destroyed—and no matter how distasteful the duty, Raha holds now tighter than ever to his conviction to do the same, lest Emet-Selch beat him to it. 

The knowledge of what is to come sits heavy in the pit of Raha’s stomach, and silence but for Emet-Selch’s breath in his ear and the hammering of his own heartbeat bears down on him, a force as immovable as their twin convictions. Raha shifts restless in Emet-Selch’s arms, not seeking escape—that impossibility—but half-hoping his discomfort is close enough to the struggling of his early confinement Emet-Selch will only grow hard enough to fuck him: a more bearable form of violence. It never took so long when Raha still fought back. 

He feels Emet-Selch’s fond laugh more than he hears it, a rumbling in his chest at Raha’s back. Emet-Selch’s hand slips from his own and Raha lets his tension make a fist of it, held close against his bare chest as though it could be protection. Long fingers trail up his arm, across his shoulder, hesitating not at all over the flesh turning to crystal and crystal back to flesh, to the tip of his chin. Held between thumb and fingers, Raha closes his eyes in knowing anticipation. Sure enough Emet-Selch turns Raha’s head toward him—but for the first time, it is Raha who bridges the gap between their lips. 

For a man who ever harps upon his characterization of mortal embodiment too fearful of an unseen fire to ever shed its shackles and look behind itself, Emet-Selch is fond of his own stolen flesh. Despite the fact it occupies one’s mouth to forbid conversation—or perhaps because of it—kissing holds a particular fascination to him. Through Emet-Selch’s lessons Raha has grown confident in his skill, enough that he mustn’t any longer be led, and Emet-Selch has not yet denied him those few occasions he has pressed instead to lead. Raha knows it pleases him—there is a particular expression he despises, a contentedness seen when Raha plays along with his demands exceptionally well, that tends to grace his reddened lips when Raha is through—but he is willing to endure it, for he imagines now the Warrior of Light in Emet-Selch’s place. 

Raha kisses him like he would— _will_ —kiss his champion, and it is not so horrible if he imagines a different body beside him, a different hand holding his face, a different voice carrying that soft moan. Emet-Selch slips a searching hand between Raha’s thighs, wet with oil he has summoned out of nothing—Raha has since learned it is somehow nothing more than a particular frequency of æther apparently found in abundance—and when Emet-Selch’s fingers slip past his rim, Raha allows himself to imagine these, too, are _his_ , filling him, opening him up for his cock. 

Raha’s own begins to fill for that fantasy, oil slick on his thighs and teeth playing at the tip of his ear. It is bold, but why would a hero be hesitant in this of all things? He must be able to guess by now what Raha dreams of: restrained strength in gentle touches, deep kisses which seem to invite bites, fingers unafraid to push inside of him and curl. With one arm about his waist Emet-Selch drags Raha to lay out across his chest, following along to keep him full; Raha has thought of that, too, of course, but more often he is on his back, told to keep still, his cock used for the Warrior of Light’s pleasure. 

Fingers wrap around Raha’s cock, and he flinches. Emet-Selch goes quiet and stiff, strung like the bow Raha has not held in more than a century, and his fingers in Raha’s hole go still; the strain of his rim around them aches. 

Raha’s eyes skate past Emet-Selch’s, but the weight of that stare pulls him in like gravity, and red eyes at last meet gold. “You still don’t want this,” Emet-Selch realizes, his voice not cold so much as distant. The shake of his head is so slight to be barely perceptible. “Any of this—not my touch, not the rest of your shattered soul.” 

The chill Raha feels cannot be explained away as fear, or only that—it travels up his limbs and weighs them down, leaving the crystal cold and unresponsive as any rock. Raha’s heart pounds in his chest. “You put words in my mouth,” he insists. 

“I know when you lie.” For all the times Raha has doubted Emet-Selch’s idea of truth, this—this rings out as a proclamation, the capstone of all their interactions and heavy as prophecy. Emet-Selch pulls free his fingers from Raha’s hole, leaving him loose and empty. “You would let all this, all I have shown you, fall to ruin? Leave the shards of your champion scattered on distant worlds to wither and die again and again?” 

“No,” says Raha reflexively, and if it keeps Emet-Selch talking all the better—Raha does not hear him. The Warrior of Light is but one man, called to Raha’s side in desperation. But Emet-Selch is right there _are_ more, one on each remaining shard—and the shards are more than he gives credit for; the denizens of the First are reflections of the Source’s partial souls, not fragments of them. Yes, Emet-Selch is powerful almost beyond comprehension, an entity on a level which makes the gods seem paltry, and to Raha his Emissary is yet unknown. But eight worlds have yet to fall to the Ascians—eight Warriors of Light, each seven times rejoined, to fight shoulder to shoulder. If their power is not more than a match for the Flood, and for Emet-Selch himself, Raha knows not what would be. 

He cannot think on this any further until he is alone, or at least hidden his face. Emet-Selch is too perceptive for Raha’s good, certainly, and Raha will not long be able to control his expression as purpose builds anew in his heart. 

The Warrior of Light will (must) forgive Raha, even if he himself cannot—he will never hear enough of this to learn the plot of their salvation was first conceived in a moment of weakness, Raha aching so desperately for a kind touch that Emet-Selch’s would do. 

“—puts the so-called wonder of Amonopolis to shame. And here it is only reconstructed from my imperfect memory. Are you telling me even you, Exarch, could be satisfied with such incomplete knowledge?” Emet-Selch’s words filter back too late: Raha had not heard him name his topic, and he cannot risk it to guess at an answer, when he can no longer afford to be _wrong_. At his blank stare, Emet-Selch makes a sound of disgust. “You aren’t even listening. Tch. Perhaps you truly _are_ incapable of understanding.” He makes to turn away, and Raha feels his chance slipping with it. 

“No,” Raha cries, voice wavering as he improvises. He will never be given the time, nor the privacy, nor the _knowledge_ he requires if Emet-Selch has decided he is beyond hope; Raha remains fair willing to gamble he will not kill him, but he has proven himself quick to lock Raha in this room and pretend to forget his existence—a chilling vision of an indefinite future, when Raha is no longer so mortal he must eat. He breathes deep, and hopes to spin a convincing confession. 

“I—I _don’t_ understand. I can't. Since I saw—since you showed me what could be…” The tears in the corners of his eyes are desperation, but Raha doubts Emet-Selch will guess as much, least of all when he reaches out with a shaking hand, fingers brushing his captor’s shoulder. He has spent so long in a facsimile of love that it is what he will want to see. Raha will stake his life on it, and the lives of all Norvrandt. “If it’s anything at all like being three—anything at all—it’s too horrifying to think what I’m lacking. And so I—I fought you, and kept fighting you. I couldn’t bear it all be for naught.” He hardly sounds convincing to his own ear—but it is not himself he has to convince, and Emet-Selch’s gaze is rapt. Raha allows a truly-felt wince to cross his features as he whispers, “But I think part of me always knew you were right.” Let him read disgust for shame. 

Emet-Selch reaches out to caress Raha’s cheek with the pad of his thumb, and Raha turns his head from it, but downward, further suggesting shame. “Save for those who themselves were once my fellows I have never known a mortal to admit it. Those few who survived the sight of our world… Even they could not bear the pain of first stepping into sunlight. Fleeing back to the familiar. No other has had the will to stay.” 

Raha cannot find words for his horror: that Emet-Selch knew of the agony and gave it not as torment but as a prize; that in this way he has murdered others he more like than not claimed to love, for the crime of wanting to live. 

“And if _I_ had died? Or gone mad?” 

“I knew you would not,” is Emet-Selch’s only answer, and Raha is spared controlling the fear in his expression for the relative mercy of Emet-Selch taking him by the shoulder, and drawing Raha close to his side where he might bury his face. “I saw greatness in you from the beginning,” and Raha hides his shudder as a sob—of relief, of yearning, he cares not what Emet-Selch chooses to believe. 

Grief, it seems, is what Emet-Selch settles on, whispering into Raha’s hair as he holds him. That though he has lived his lives in darkness he needn’t mourn their loss, for he shall be eternal. That he may dwell here until they have rejoined the shards and he is made whole— _near_ -whole, Raha does not correct him, for he will gain nothing from asking after the Thirteenth. That though Raha was unknown to him before, he is certain to become more beautiful than any, and the word Emet-Selch uses speaks not of the body’s æsthetics but of the virtue within his soul. “I long to know your true name, G’raha Tia.” 

“When I learn it, you shall be the first to hear it spoken,” Raha agrees, and welcomes the kiss which will ensure Emet-Selch does not ruminate on the sentiment. When Emet-Selch’s hands begin to wander, he simply protests, “I’m tired.” Surely after soothing his nightmare and witnessing his supposed awakening Emet-Selch will believe him; it is what he wants to believe, and it is true besides. 

It comes as a surprise to Raha when still something is new: he has slept beside Emet-Selch for ████, and has even learned to do so with Emet-Selch at his back, a threat disguised as protection. But for the first time Raha is gathered into his arms, draped across him and guided to lay his head onto Emet-Selch’s shoulder; a thin sheet laid over them though neither have need of warmth; and a confession murmured after a long pause, that Raha suspects he was not meant to hear. “So am I.” 

Raha feigns his sleep, having come too far to move or even grant himself a small smile lest he break the spell it seems _he_ , for once, has cast. So long as he plays his part Emet-Selch’s longing shall fill in whatever gaps Raha may overlook—in three words he has all but confirmed it. Raha’s task, though daunting, requires nothing but æther and time. The former swirls boundless in all directions, as he still at times sees behind his eyelids; as to the latter, he is half-sure so long as he can convince Emet-Selch he seeks wisdom he has time indefinite. 

And so Raha waits, and sleeps, and thereafter, the Crystal Exarch wakes tucked into Emet-Selch’s embrace. 

The Exarch is prepared in the times ahead to prove his sincerity, but Emet-Selch requires so little convincing as to be irresponsible, if it did not serve the Exarch’s purpose. Yes, the Exarch must share his bed, but his room is no longer his prison. He has accepted invitations to various sites and requested to be taken to others, and has not yet been denied. It seems Emet-Selch delights in company on his outings—at least he does not scowl so deeply as he once had—and so they are always stretched long, ever requiring walks through his illusory city as meandering as the conversations which fill them. If the Exarch limps, as he often does, Emet-Selch either does not notice or does not care, but this the Exarch believes is borne like all else not of cruelty but simply thoughtlessness. The Exarch has, after all, supposedly transcended the chains of mortal embodiment, in Emet-Selch’s eyes. To lead them to rest, or worse yet carry him, Emet-Selch would no doubt agree is an insult. 

The Exarch has certainly survived far worse than an ache in his hips, and the end of the worst is in sight—this, he continues to remind himself, thinking of his raisons d'être. His city—no, his world, and his hero resplendent, welcoming in victory. The Exarch thinks of him when Emet-Selch takes him into his arms at night, and what pleasure he could offer, to make something of the trials he has endured. 

And he is at least better rested, for the dreams of Allag come to an end. The Exarch does not recognize the last for what it is until he is looking back upon it, █████ later, and upon recollection it is only notable for being the last: there is no new depravity to be found, no grand realization, not even any particular violence he had not long grown inured to. So long a constant, their absence is strange—unmooring even as the Exarch is glad of it. He does not care to think why they would have stopped so abruptly, and so he does not. 

They pass much of their stagnant time in Anyder. He suspects Emet-Selch subtly alters the manifestations within, for each time the Exarch is led to some new datum, or an unexplored wing, or an unmet shade he will supposedly like—but they are indeed not much for conversation, and Emet-Selch fills the silences with grand promises of _proper_ introductions. 

Emet-Selch persists, though he admits surprise that the Exarch does not favor the practical exhibitions of the Akadaemia’s artificial biomes, populated fully by engendered forms. They attend a children’s fair, apparently held regularly and judged by Emet-Selch’s own Bureau: a great hall filed with poorly-articulated demonstrations of thoughtforms, simple concepts of rushed construction. When questioned, Emet-Selch claims—albeit fondly—he believed the Exarch might more easily comprehend their concepts, for Amaurotian children likewise must be taught there is more to their world than that which they empirically perceive. He means no insult; the Exarch would rather he did than _pity_. 

But Emet-Selch does not question it when the Exarch shares he has ever favored data stores to be perused at leisure, no matter how dense their content. “I always did as well,” he says simply, particularly insufferable, and thereafter sees them to the grand building from which he claims to have preferred to conduct his business. 

The shades which populate it, browsing stacks or bent over their studies, are still of no interest, but at least they never seem to take notice when Emet-Selch decides he is of a mind to ravish his would-be student. It is shame enough to pretend desire without witnesses. 

The hall warps around him, or seems to, when Emet-Selch pulls him into his arms—a bench seat meant for giants suddenly to his own scale. After ████ of consideration the Exarch does not think Emet-Selch intends this effect, but rather must with a sour taste in his mouth admit that his mind cannot cope otherwise with the information presented. Emet-Selch is a universal constant, and so by necessity the Exarch’s knees press against the seat’s back when he perches in his lap, thighs forced so wide by his breadth it welcomes the ache into the Exarch’s hips before he’s even been touched. 

The only other constant he has in this world is the crystal: for all the Exarch has languished in Amaurot, it has stolen no more of his body. The line of it sits but an ilm above the scar Emet-Selch’s bullet left, imperceptibly closer than it had been the moment Emet-Selch’s fingers dug it out of him. The Exarch clings to this, the gift of their false eternity, as he clings to Emet-Selch’s shoulders in feigned need. What was meant to break him is his salvation, the time he has needed to devise the spell to bring these hallowed halls down around them. 

Emet-Selch pulls aside the Exarch’s robes to bare his shoulder, mouthing at the crystal to the line of his neck and kissing bruises into the hollow of his throat, where still there remains warm flesh. It feels vulnerable in its fragility, his pulse fluttering beneath the press of Emet-Selch’s lips, no matter that for Emet-Selch it is a simpler task to shatter or even unmake crystal than to draw blood into skin. If anything at all is to make the Exarch vulnerable, it is not the limitations of his body but that he wishes to shed its immortality for eternity, that falsehood upon which Emet-Selch feeds. 

Mouthing at the Exarch’s neck, Emet-Selch rests his fingertips upon his lower lip so that the Exarch accepts them into his own. He sucks them in the way he is expected to, as if they were Emet-Selch’s cock—sucking them wet, so his hole might not be bloodied by what he is given. Even fucked loose and open as he feels from the lazy fingering he had awoken to, for all his attempts the Exarch is too small to take Emet-Selch dry for any reason but to punish himself, and he can no longer afford the luxury of open antagonism. 

Emet-Selch does not bother to undress either of them, only sweeps aside the Exarch’s skirts and curls fingers inside his rim. There is oil left there, around and inside it, and so while the Exarch cannot wet Emet-Selch’s fingers enough to make his entrance comfortable, it is not _difficult_. He rests his forehead upon Emet-Selch’s shoulder, shying away from his mouth, and there is nothing but his cock soft against his thigh to betray that the Exarch’s ragged breaths are not for intensity of pleasure. Face to face it is most dangerous to play at lovers; he is fortunate, in a way, that still it hurts to be opened, and that Emet-Selch has never expected him to be hard when he is full. It is more kindness than Xande granted. 

Those few instances his dreams were lucid, and the Exarch was aware enough to remember himself and his purpose, fantasies of the Warrior of Light were his only balm and source of strength; still, it hurt to think of his champion, tarnishing him by association with such depravity. When the Exarch is had by Emet-Selch, he needs no such thoughts to endure, but in order to affect desire he must imagine the Warrior of Light, and not to soothe him afterward but to assume Emet-Selch’s place. It is abhorrent to ascribe to him such violence; it is worse that his cock fills for it. 

Emet-Selch takes the twitch of his cock for a sign, and lets his fingers slip out of the Exarch’s hole; reclining where he sits, shining-wet fingers smearing the back of the seat as he hooks his elbow over it, Emet-Selch hikes up his own layered skirts to free his cock. Tipping his head, he raises his brow: “Well then, Exarch?” His voice drips confidence. “Your game.” 

Wrapping his fingers around the girth of Emet-Selch’s cock banishes the wispy fantasies of another in his place—something in the Exarch’s active participation which shatters the illusion. He’s glad of it, in a way: glad that but for shadow puppets of the ever-dead, he and Emet-Selch are alone as he shifts himself in the Ascian’s lap and guides himself down onto his cock. 

Emet-Selch will surely read his gratitude for the shame his mind has been kind enough to spare itself for _wanting_ , and will not begrudge him the way his own cock softens once more. 

When he has just begun to move, clutching to Emet-Selch’s collar for his leverage, the Ascian says, “Indulge me a moment,” thoughtful, and the Exarch feels dread settle heavy in the pit of his stomach. Lowering his head to look up at Emet-Selch from beneath his lashes, the Exarch lets his slow blink be his assent as he lowers himself further, Emet-Selch’s cock just beginning to fill him deeply enough the Exarch wants only to writhe until he escapes it. “Would it be preferable to have half of your friends whole and hale, the others lost, or to have them all, but at a great and terrible cost which can never be undone?” 

The Exarch cannot show his alarm. He tells himself this is akin to any other thought experiment Emet-Selch insists upon debating in their bed, and has no hidden intent—nonsense on the level of _if an unstable ætheryte would set three adrift in the Lifestream..._ that inevitably has no answer or aim beyond garnering the Exarch’s attention. 

“What is the cost?” the Exarch plays. 

“Does it matter?” 

“Of course,” and if the Exarch sounds disenchanted, let Emet-Selch believe it is not for worry but simply for how many times they have fallen back to this same disagreement. “How am I to answer which is preferable if you have not given me the full parameters?” 

“And here I thought I had.” The sound Emet-Selch makes then is as impatient and petulant as the Exarch imagines he himself was in childhood—surely millennia should make a man more mature—and he brings his hands down to wrap his long fingers around the Exarch’s hips, so much larger they threaten to meet in the small of his back. He lifts the Exarch up and lets him fall again, too lazy to be called a _thrust_ , but it imparts his intent full well. There are times Emet-Selch seems only to strive to lead the Exarch to enlightenment, lying long nights beside him without any touch which might seem to suit a lover; this occasion is apparently not among them. “Oh, very well. That all who live and who will ever live—that is, _all_ —will come away forever scarred, whilst your enemy cannot ever said to be truly beaten.” 

The Exarch’s blood runs cold. 

He thinks of all he has willingly sacrificed—the lives of the eight-times rejoined world—and of all he is ready to: the city whose fortifications he built up knowing his own hand would like as not one day be its ruination, the Scions dragged unintentionally and unwilling across the Rift, set adrift of their bodies; of the innocent millions trapped in a mirror the Exarch sees no worthwhile course even passingly feasible but to shatter, making of the First another Void to forbid the Ascians use of it. 

If Emet-Selch has realized even half of this, as his words so damningly suggest, then the Exarch has lost. He has failed. He can never hope to regain the Ascian’s trust, after such a ploy. 

Unable to think of a better path than to answer honestly, the Exarch sits in Emet-Selch’s lap speared open on his cock, meets Emet-Selch’s piercing eyes with his own, and says, truthfully, “Half.” 

“I dared not hope you’d come so far.” There is awe in his voice, true awe, and horror blooms within the Exarch’s heart that he could so convincingly portray what he knows is a ruse. “Those who fell to Hydælyn are forever lost to us, but through His will, the rest needn’t be. Half our kind gave up their lives, their very dignity, to save the rest—with this, the Source shall be more than half-restored. A proper sacrifice, and…” 

“And Zodiark would restore their souls.” The Exarch cannot hope to mask his disgust, his only hope lying in Emet-Selch’s preoccupation elsewhere. “Can you do that?” 

“I had considered it, though I had not full settled on the course until this moment. But the Emissary does believe it like to succeed.” The Exarch closes his eyes, managing to put off his shudder until he fucks himself down again onto Emet-Selch’s cock, and his wince will be seen as pain. And so the Exarch _will_ surely bring ruination upon the First, and the Source itself, and he will not begin to guess what doom shall await those of the remaining shards—death, if they are fortunate. 

“Should we win His favor—oh, you will _feel_ it, Exarch, the very instant.” There is a madness to his voice, so rarely heard that the Exarch too often forgets: Emet-Selch is as devout as the rest of his kind, from whose image Zodiark was created and thrall to him in turn. Millions mean nothing to him if it should only please his lord. 

And should Zodiark rule Emet-Selch may have his world restored only if he does not spare his pet—something slithers cold up the Exarch’s spine to whisper into not his ear but his heart, _a billion lives on your hands and for naught_. 

“Even if He refuses, all is not lost,” Emet-Selch continues, making his promises, all but murmuring now, his breath hot on the Exarch’s throat. “You will feel no different now, but only until the next, when you become nine. It would not take long to manufacture the rest. Not with you at my side.” 

The Exarch’s breath catches—terror and aught else, but there is enough of a dark side to amazement it goes unnoticed. He reaches out one hand to Emet-Selch’s face and leans in for a kiss that he might only _stop_ and the Exarch does not have to hear another word of this—this— 

He has no words. Every expectation, no matter how terrible, Emet-Selch finds a way to exceed. But he turns his face away from the kiss, the Exarch’s lips only brushing past his own, and he lowers his head to rest his forehead atop the Exarch’s shoulder. A hand finds its way beneath his thigh, and the other the Exarch’s opposing armpit: holding him so, Emet-Selch rocks him in his lap, filling him deep and aching. 

“Our time here is near to an end,” Emet-Selch murmurs into the line of his neck, “but an eternity awaits. The Warrior of Light is all but at our door.” 

“Then this is the last…” the Exarch cannot finish—does not know how to. How long before the Warrior of Light arrives, when time has been stretched out meaningless in all directions? A day? A year? A century? This may be the last time Emet-Selch lays hands upon him, but so too might there be a thousand thousand violations to come. It all seems pointless: to wonder, to _hope_. He has well-earned whatever new hell Hydælyn sees fit to carve out for him. 

“The last day you will remain half-finished, yes,” says Emet-Selch. “If all goes as planned. Time once again flows as it should,” as though it was not his own doing which slowed it near to stopping. “I have made you wait long enough.” 

“No,” says the Exarch, for what else has he to lose, “ _no_ ,” and let Emet-Selch think it fear for what he will become, a broken soul clinging to all he knows to his own despair, and perhaps it is—in one day’s time, one real day, either Emet-Selch will lie dead or they both will, and it is not death he fears, he thinks, he is _almost_ sure, but failure, when he was so close. 

Emet-Selch rises, and lifts the Exarch with him—a display of power so normal it feels out of place here, to be picked up and— _deposited_ on the tabletop, when nearly all they’ve yet done is philosophize on the subject of ultracide. The Exarch is kissed on the lips as he is set down, and he feels the tracks his tears have left across his cheeks for the first time beneath Emet-Selch’s breath. 

“We will not know each other in this world again,” says Emet-Selch, and it is a promise rather than a goodbye: he thrusts into the Exarch like if he only does so hard enough he can make space for himself not only in this body but the next, and whatever comes after. 

The Exarch fights, nails digging bloody rivulets in Emet-Selch’s shoulders and upper arms; Emet-Selch does not seem to mind, nor find this at odds with the way he has played at loving him. “Feel your fear,” he spurs on, a darkness in his voice which must be pleasure. “What soul would not be afraid when faced with so much, when it is still incomplete?” 

The Exarch does not know how to fight him, and he does not know how _not_ to, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the bulk of Emet-Selch’s chest until Emet-Selch grows weary of it and pins him to the table. The crystal of his arm, his shoulder, his neck all feel to him too heavy to lift, unable to so much as thrash his head; the other hand Emet-Selch catches by the wrist and holds it still with bruising force. The Exarch feels the tandem sting of Emet-Selch’s teeth scraping his throat and his rim stretched, fragile and overfull, afraid as ever to be torn apart though he never has, not for less than Xande; his leg is pinned up, knee to his own chest, so Emet-Selch might take him deeper, deep enough to turn his stomach, to force cries from his lips and make his pinned shoulders twitch in ever-useless attempts to shove Emet-Selch off, _away_. Emet-Selch lifts his head to occupy his mouth as well, and the Exarch tastes iron and salt, his blood and tears, on Emet-Selch’s tongue when he licks in past the Exarch’s slack lips. 

Emet-Selch’s other hand wraps around the Exarch’s tapered cock, soft as it almost always is, and the drag of his dry palm against sensitive skin brings no pleasure but makes a sob catch deep in his throat; he would thrash, if he could move at all, but the Exarch has barely the freedom to twist his hips away from the touch, and that only drives Emet-Selch’s cock deeper, or to a new angle yet undiscovered in its capacity to bring him to breaking. 

Emet-Selch laughs, reeling from the rush of the Exarch’s raw emotion unleashed all at once and still so easily contained, little better than helpless should Emet-Selch only wish to prove it to him. 

(But he _cannot_ be helpless, or his helplessness cannot define him: failure means the end of all worlds, all _reality_. Failure means the death of everyone and everything the Exarch holds dear, or not death but rather their unmaking, and with them even the forces beyond comprehension which drive them brought to ruin. He will die a thousand times if only it means the world he knows might live, but nothing is so easy, and death is a kindness he has not earned.) 

Emet-Selch’s hand slips from the Exarch’s cock, losing interest in the futility of wringing out pleasure when he is all but insensate, too overrun to know anything but the brutality of the fullness; a searching finger finds on the outstroke a way inside of him alongside Emet-Selch’s cock, and then they are both hilted inside of him and the Exarch’s scream is swallowed up by something Emet-Selch would call a kiss, and the Exarch would name nothing so gentle. 

“Cry out,” Emet-Selch orders, or pleas—his voice somewhere in the range it was so long ago now when he offered the Exarch the vision of the world as he thinks it should be, desperate and longing and wistful for all its cruelty. He sounds once more like static, the memory of that _creature_ encroaching on reality and finding even its geometry wanting coming back to the fore—the Exarch closes his eyes, stinging with tears, and wishes only that it would spare him any of this. “This is how it’s meant to feel,” says Emet-Selch, or Hades, or just another lost and nameless soul in the face of the mission of an unknowable thing more powerful by an order of magnitude than what they call gods. “When first faced with the enormity of our Lord and of our purpose, I too fought and wept. Let your voice ring out.” And then, even if all else he has ever said is true as he claims, this must be a lie, it _must_ be: “You are not alone.” 

The Exarch is a liar too, and so he tells himself _you can endure this_. It does not matter that he is too shaken to act: he always cries when Emet-Selch forces his way so deeply inside of him, and the terror gripping his soul which the Ascian mistakes—or worse, horrifying, perhaps sees true—for ecstasy awash in Zodiark’s designs gives the Exarch leave to scream. This is the last time, and all he must do is endure being unmade. 

He feels a pang of wistfulness for this city, for Anyder above him in all its lost glory, which all too soon will be unmade alike; this fleeting impression is the Exarch’s last moment of awareness in the day before the end. 

He awakes in the room he can no longer call his cell, laid out on the bed as though _he_ were to be Emet-Selch’s sacrifice, with spend on his thighs and his robes still askew. The door is flung wide, and the Exarch’s staff leans against the wall in the corner: if he did not know better, he would think it a trick. 

The Exarch climbs down from the bed he will never again share with his captor and adjusts his layers, stained and ripped and worn in a way only time can take credit for. He fastens his sandals, and even the straps across his arm. The Warrior of Light will be expecting him as he was, and while he cannot provide this, he can make an effort to at least look the part. 

He leaves Emet-Selch’s seed drying on his thighs: a needless, visceral reminder of their last encounter, of all he must fight to prevent. 

Outside the false sky rains fire on the ruins of Amaurot. On unsteady legs the Exarch takes his first limping step out of dreamlike stasis, through an end of a world, toward their future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I could not well leave matters half-finished.”


End file.
